29 December 2003

The secret history of the past half century is slowly emerging.

25 November 2003 [make link]

How many things are named after 19th Century Generals? Beef, chicken, sweaters, ordinance, saddles, boots, hair, but unfortunately, not hookers.

Should we include a flower named after a Secretary of War? Or should we remember the generals for their recreational activities, real, mythical, or just plain scandalous?

Considering their frequent incompetence as generals, this is probably better than remembering them for their battles.

7 November 2003

"Many people think that history is a dull subject. Dull? Is it 'dull' that Jesse James once got bitten on the forehead by an ant, and at first it didn't seem like anything, but then the bite got worse and worse, so he went to a doctor in town, and the secretary told him to wait, so he sat down and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited, and then finally he got to see the doctor, and the doctor put some salve on it? You call that dull?" -- Jack Handy

22 October 2003 [make link]

In search of the right historical analogy.

14 October 2003

American farm policy

12 October 2003 [make link]

The Grand Canyon Mystery

4 October 2003

Basic biology: Alpha males spread their genes throughout the population.

4 October 2003 [make link]

Update: You know, it occurred to me that if the RIAA went around enforcing copyright laws in 1812, we wouldn't have a national anthem, seeing as how it's stolen and all. We wouldn't even have too many runners-up to chose from either.

25 August 2003

Well, it looks like like somebody was paying attention during the last century and millennium.

26 July 2003

Black Confederates: Forgotten heroes, cynical myth or just dang fools? Or maybe it's more a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Civil War buffs have argued for years about it (even though most professional historians don't). And even if it's true, the bigger question might be, does multiracial soldiering necessarily mean racial equality?

23 July 2003

Everything you know is wrong.

14 July 2003

Have you ever taken a really good look at the Bayeux Tapestry? It's got everything you could possibly want in great art: monsters, sex, gore, camels, prophetic comets, scandalous clerics, singing centaurs, bear baitings, severed heads, looting the dead, and chickens.

5 July 2003

When you think about it logically, it's not natural for rocks to fall from the sky. If anything, it's supernatural, and God must be trying to tell us something. So it's no surprise that humankind has such a rich tradition of sacred meteorites. A partial list might include...

• Aphrodite Uranos of Paphos
• Artemis at Ephesus
• The Benben of Heliopolis
• The Black Stone of El-Gabal of Emesa
• Cybele of Pessinus
• The Delphi omphalos
• Iron Creek Manitou Stone
• Iron Mountain (maybe not technically "sacred")
• Lake Kaali
• The Trojan Palladion (a wooden meteorite?)
• Tomanowas, the Willamette meteorite

Even Christianity and Islam [cache] may have meteors in their closets.

Not that I'm complaining. Look at what happened last time Earthlings forgot to placate the rock-throwing sky-gods.