Charles Lindbergh and America First

When Ron Paul was an active contender for the presidential nomination, one criticism leveled against his anti-war stance was that it was reminiscent of the position of the "America First Committee" prior to our entry into the Second World War. This was new to me (my education having focused more on science than on history), so I recently searched for more information. As usual, the Wikipedia article on the America First Committee is the easiest place to start. They describe the AFC as the foremost pressure group against American entry into WWII. The most prominent spokesman for the AFC was Charles Lindbergh, whose September 1941 speech to a hostile crowd is embedded above. The basic, oversimplified, position was that America should defend itself within its own hemisphere, and not venture into a European conflict.

Although the AFC position represented that of the majority of Americans, public sentiment changed after the Pearl Harbor attack, and the AFC therefore disbanded. One viewpoint of the AFC's role in history is that expressed by conservative commentator Pat Buchanan: "By keeping America out of World War II until Hitler attacked Stalin in June of 1941, Soviet Russia, not America, bore the brunt of the fighting, bleeding and dying to defeat Nazi Germany." The opposite viewpoint, of course, is that offense is the best defense and that nonintervention in foreign wars is detrimental to American security.

The degree to which Lindbergh's comments in the 1941 video above are applicable to the current state of the world are debatable, but it's too late at night for me to start that debate now.

America - Land of Hope

If the font is too small in the embedded cartoon, the original may be easier to read (or you can click on it to enlarge).

The price of oil hasn't changed since 2001...

... if you buy the oil with gold. The chart above is from the American Geological Institute; the blue line is the price of oil in dollars, the red line is the price in euros. The flat purple line shows the number of barrels per ounce of gold. The reason Americans are paying more for oil/heating oil/gasoline/plastics and other oil-based products is not because producing countries have raised their prices, but because Fed policy and federal government policies have debased our currency.

As the source article's title indicates, "maybe Ron Paul was right..."

Another dancing dog

Those who enjoyed my earlier post of canine musical freestyle will appreciate this episode from the same "Britain's Got Talent" program that featured Paul Pott's rendition of Nessun Dorma. It's kind of sad during the introduction when the 16-y.o. girl says "if I didn't have Gin [the dog], I wouldn't really have a life," but it certainly is a talented animal. (Credit to Nothing To Do With Arbroath.)

Elevator graffiti

I don't approve of graffiti, but this is a clever creation. You have to have some experience with videogaming to appreciate it...

Hating Jimmy Carter

"When a government is unhappy with an official or quasi-official visitor, there are all sorts of ways of showing displeasure. But for the Israeli government to withdraw police protection from peacemaker Jimmy Carter, and therefore make an assassination attempt easier, seems to me unprecedented and highly unfortunate."

(Quotation and credit to the Lew Rockwell blog for spotting this.)

"American sources close to the matter said the Shin Bet security service, which helps protect visiting dignitaries and is overseen by Olmert's office, declined to meet the head of Carter's Secret Service security detail or provide his team with assistance as is customary during such visits. Another source described the snub as an "unprecedented" breach between the Israeli Shin Bet and the U.S. Secret Service, which protects all current and former U.S. presidents, as well as Israeli leaders when they visit the United States." (Quote from this detailed Reuters article.)

TYWKIWDBI's Technorati ranking

This blog is approaching its 4-month anniversary, so I checked the Technorati statistics; the current ranking is 3,366,655, which, on a scale of 1 to 10, gives TYWKIWDBI an "authority rating" of 2. (Technorati monitors 112,000,000 blogs).

According to the Google Analytics data, each week there are approximately 100 visitors from 30 countries - predominantly from the U.S., followed by Canada, Australia, and the U.K.

Trees older than the earth !!!

I had assumed that no one would ever find trees older than the Bristlecone pines of California (the one dubbed "Methusaleh" is approximately 5,000 years old (the tree "Prometheus" was actually older, but it was cut down during the process of establishing its age!)

Now a group of scientists from the University of Umea in Sweden are reporting the discovery of Norway spruces in central Sweden whose roots are 8,000 years old. The rigors of a near-arctic climate result in the intermittent dying-back of the central trunk (every 600 years or so), but the roots then put forth new growth, and some individual trees have thus been present since the end of the last Ice Age!

As someone on the Reddit discussion board noted, the best name for this newly discovered tree would be Yggdrasil (the ash tree at the center of the universe in Norse cosmology).

Of course, those with a more fundamentalist approach to interpreting the world will have to puzzle over (or ignore) the fact that this tree is 2,000 years older than the earth itself.....

Iculanibokola (cannibal fork)

"...was used by attendants during ritual feasts to feed individuals considered too holy to touch food. The influence of Christianity ended cannibalism in Fiji by the close of the 19th century, but Western fascination with the grisly practice continued. In the late 1880s tourist demand sparked a brisk trade in counterfeit cannibal forks that continues today."(image and text from National Geographic website)

Ivorybill woodpecker

"The population of the largest woodpecker in North America, the crow-size ivorybill, was already small by March 1938, when guide J. J. Kuhn and ornithologist James Tanner banded this baby in a Louisiana swamp. After jumping from its nest, the little ivorybill "climbed up Kuhn's arm . . . until it reached his shoulder . . . and gave a few sharp taps on his cap. . . . Upward it climbed until it was perched on the cap," wrote Tanner, who returned it to its nest. Though Tanner sighted the same bird the next year, only a few more ivorybills were ever seen, anywhere. The last confirmed sighting was in 1971 in southern Louisiana..." (Image and text from National Geographic website)

"Happy Slapping" the wrong person

I wasn't familiar with "happy slapping" until I encountered a link to this video on the Reddit discussion board this morning. Here is the intro to the Wikipedia explanation:

Happy slapping is a fad in which an unsuspecting victim is attacked while an accomplice records the assault (commonly with a camera phone or a smartphone). The name can refer to many types of violent assaults, not just slapping, but some rape and sexual assaults have been wrongly classified as "happy slapping" by the media. Within the United Kingdon, where the term is used most frequently, it is associated with the ned/chav sub-culture. Happy slapping filming attacks seem to be common in modern bullying, and not unique to happy slapping. The core defining feature of happy slapping is an effort by the attacker to make the assault seem like a comical surprise at the victim's expense. When the "happy slapping" craze first started it was seen amongst youngsters as harmless fun, but as times have progressed some happy slappers have indulged in extreme violence, and several such incidents have had fatal outcomes.

In the video above, the companion of the girl who is happy-slapped is a trained boxer...

Spasticville, Kansas

SPASTICVILLE, Kan., April 10 (UPI) -- The city administrator of Spasticville, Kan., said he has applied to the U.S. Geological Survey to have the city's name changed to Trails End.

The administrator said he collected the proper amount of signatures and sent them in with the accompanying forms to apply for the name change, KWCH-TV, Wichita, Kan., reported Thursday. He said it could be months before researchers analyze the proposal and send it to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names for a decision.

Residents of the Sedgwick County town said accounts vary on how Spasticville got its name, but some theorize it was named for a home for the mentally handicapped that used to be located in the area.

(Credit to Nothing To Do With Arbroath)

Furor over Jesus orgy

This news item carried by Associated Press today is rich with potential for discussion on so many levels - the impact of religious belief, tolerance of diverse viewpoints, definitions of profanity, depictions of Mohammed, definitions of art versus pornography, freedom of the press - that for now I'll just post the bare bones of the announcement without personal commentary.

Associated Press, April 11, 2008.
Austrians are locked in a nationwide debate touched off by the brief display in a prestigious Roman Catholic museum of an etching that depicts Jesus Christ and his disciples having an orgy during the biblical Last Supper.

A chastened and chagrined Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, the top churchman in this largely conservative and overwhelmingly Catholic country, has ordered the offending artwork removed.

But the controversy rages on, with the Austrian media comparing it to the furor triggered by the Prophet Muhammad cartoons.

In some ways, it is proving as emotional as the political firestorm that occurred in New York in 1999, when then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was so offended by a portrait of the Virgin Mary adorned with elephant dung that he temporarily cut off funding to the Brooklyn Museum.

"I've even seen Web postings from extremists who have threatened to come to Vienna and blow up its museums with Molotov cocktails," exhibition curator Michael Kaufmann said Friday.

The dispute began on March 12 with the opening of "Religion, Flesh and Power," a collection of about 50 paintings, drawings and sculptures — some with homo-erotic themes — by Austrian artist Alfred Hrdlicka.

Among them is Hrdlicka's rendition of the Last Supper: a large, loosely rendered black and white etching that shows Jesus and his disciples engaging in sex acts on the table where they shared their final meal before Christ's crucifixion...

"The protests came primarily out of fundamentalist Christian circles in the USA and Germany," he said, referring to various Web sites...

Kaufmann concedes the whole point of the exhibition backfired badly.

"Their intention was to show that the church is wide open," he said. "Alfred (Hrdlicka) is more Christian than many people who go to church each Sunday."

More information at this news link (and probably many more websites before this day is over). The museum website has a discussion of the exhibit with some (SFW) images, but it's auf deutsch.

For shame...

US to skip cluster bomb meeting...
Associated Press, April 11, 2008

GENEVA - The United States will skip a meeting in Dublin next month that aims to ban cluster bombs, officials said Friday.

Instead, Washington will focus on separate United Nations talks in Geneva that will restrict — but not ban — the use of the weapon...

More than 100 countries are expected to meet May 19-30 in Dublin, where they will try to forge a final agreement on banning a weapon they consider a serious threat to civilians.

Cluster bombs are built to explode above the ground and release thousands of small bomblets primed to detonate on impact.

Combat results show that 10 to 40 percent of the bomblets fail to go off on impact but can explode later, killing and maiming civilians. Children are particularly vulnerable as they are attracted to the bright flashlight-battery sized bomblets.

The United States, Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Israel oppose a ban on cluster bombs, arguing that there are legitimate military uses for the weapon.

Kitchen knife holder