This past weekend, CNN did a survey where they asked people what mankind’s greatest achievement was. Surprisingly few said “space flight,” in view of the hype the Apollo 11 moon mission has gotten over the last few days. The subjects interviewed were just as likely to nominate fire, computers, airplanes, music, or even cup noodles.
I supposed if they had spoken to anybody in Kentucky, we’d see “maple-flavored bacon” on the list. It reminds me of when I visited the Middle East, I got the distinct impression that the Israelis thought non-dairy creamer was America’s greatest invention. Why? Orthodox Jews have rules against having meat and dairy products at the same meal, so non-dairy creamer lets them have coffee anytime they want and still be kosher!
But seriously, I’m also seeing a bit of nonsense from folks who ought to know better. Whoopi Goldberg, for instance. On yesterday’s showing of “The View,” Whoopi entertained conspiracy theories about the moon landings being faked. She asked how the flag “rippled” if there was no wind, and who took the pictures that show both astronauts. Oh brother, I thought she was old enough to remember what happened! First, the flag stuck out because it had a rod in it, and after they set it up, the only time it moved was when it was blasted by the LEM taking off, after the moonwalk. And I guess she never heard you can put a camera on a tripod, to snap pictures without holding it. It looks like she got the real NASA missions confused with Capricorn One, the movie about a fake one.
From now on, I’m not going to recommend “The View” to anyone, except to use as an interrogation device. If they show this at Gitmo, the prisoners will want us to bring back waterboarding for sure!
showing of “The View,” Whoopi Goldberg entertained conspiracy theories about the moon landings being faked. She asked how the flag “rippled” if there was no wind, and who took the pictures that show both astronauts. Oh brother, I thought she was old enough to remember what happened! First, the flag stuck out because it had a rod in it, and after they set it up, the only time it moved was when it was blasted by the LEM taking off, after the moonwalk. And I guess she never heard you can put a camera on a tripod, to snap pictures without holding it.
From now on, I’m not going to recommend “The View” to anyone, except to use as an interrogation device. If they show this at Gitmo, the prisoners will want us to bring back waterboarding for sure!
It was on this day in 1969 that men first landed on the moon. I watched the telecasts on TV, and stayed up late to watch the moonwalk; I have long suspected that the wackos who say we never went to the moon are too young to remember the Apollo 11 mission themselves.
Along that line, last night I wrote the following two paragraphs for my upcoming American history paper:
The summer of 1969 is worth remembering because of two key events. First, the United States won the “space race,” by landing men on the moon with the Apollo 11 mission. Throughout the 1950s, there was considerable concern that the Soviet Union would get their first (Pesident Johnson once said, “I do not believe that this generation of Americans is willing to resign itself to going to bed each night by the light of a Communist moon”), and as late as 1964, when somebody asked Werner von Braun, the famous rocket scientist, what he expected to find on the moon, he answered, “Russians.” However, with the highly successful Gemini program, the United States caught up with the Soviets, when it came to accomplishments in space. The Apollo program was delayed by more than a year when a tragic fire incinerated the first Apollo spacecraft on the ground, taking the lives of its three astronauts, but Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins still made it to the moon before the deadline set by JFK. After that, public interest in space exploration rapidly faded; three of the proposed ten moon missions were cancelled to cut costs, and the only plans made to put men in space involved earth orbital missions like those on Skylab, the first American space station.
The other event was Woodstock, probably the most famous music festival of all time. Held on a farm in upstate new York, for three days in August 1969, hundreds of thousands of fans converged on the spot, and this concert was remembered afterwards as the highwater mark of the hippie movement. But by this time, Nixon was also starting to pull troops out of Vietnam (“Vietnamization”), so for the angriest hippies, this took the wind out of their sails. The American counterculture enjoyed a few more good years before it disappeared from the stage, but Ias with the space program, most Americans shifted their attention to another cause.
The summer of 1969 is worth remembering because of two key events. First, the United States won the “space race,” by landing men on the moon with the Apollo 11 mission. Throughout the 1950s, there was considerable concern that the Soviet Union would get their first (President Johnson once said, “I do not believe that this generation of Americans is willing to resign itself to going to bed each night by the light of a Communist moon”), and as late as 1964, when somebody asked Werner von Braun, the famous rocket scientist, what he expected to find on the moon, he answered, “Russians.” However, with the highly successful Gemini program, the United States caught up with the Soviets, when it came to accomplishments in space. The Apollo program was delayed by more than a year when a tragic fire incinerated the first Apollo spacecraft on the ground, taking the lives of its three astronauts, but Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins still made it to the moon before the deadline set by JFK. After that, public interest in space exploration rapidly faded; three of the proposed ten moon missions were cancelled to cut costs, and the only plans made to put men in space involved earth orbital missions like those on Skylab, the first American space station.
The other event was Woodstock, probably the most famous music festival of all time. Held on a farm in upstate new York, for three rainy days in August 1969, hundreds of thousands of fans converged on the spot, and this concert was remembered afterwards as the highwater mark of the hippie movement. But by this time, Nixon was also starting to pull troops out of Vietnam (“Vietnamization”), so for the angriest hippies, this took the wind out of their sails. The American counterculture enjoyed a few more good years before it disappeared from the stage, but as with the space program, most Americans shifted their attention to another cause, like environmentalism or feminism.
I also find it a bit ironic that Walter Cronkite died last Friday, missing this anniversary by just one weekend. Yes, his coverage of the Vietnam War was reprehensible, and since retirement he has said some things that are quite moonbatty. Still, he was also an enthusiastic supporter of our space program, and was at his best when he reported on missions like this one.
For all these years, we haven’t seen the equipment left behind by the astronauts, when they returned to earth. Now a space probe orbiting the moon has finally snapped a picture of the descent stage from the Apollo 11 Lunar Module (“LEM”). Check it out here:
And the NASA folks had us fooled by keeping a cool head, and speaking in code words, as the LEM made its final descent. I remember reading afterwards about how they were down to their last seconds of fuel, and How Neil Armstrong had to land manually when he saw the flight computer aiming them toward a football-field-sized crater full of rocks, but I didn’t know the computer itself had locked up, too. Watch this National Geographic video to see what really happened:
“And that’s the way it was,” as Cronkite would have said. Have a pleasant day, whether you’re on earth or elsewhere.
I recently saw a handful of quotes from Thomas Jefferson that impressed me. What a visionary! In view of the current economic situation and Washington D.C.’s “culture of corruption,” they speak more loudly than ever. Naturally I added them to my Politcal Quotes page, and created a new section for them to go with the two Jefferson quotes I already had there:
Thomas Jefferson Quotes
John F. Kennedy once said to a assembled group of scholars in the White House, “I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House – with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.” It amazes me how many things Jefferson wrote and said, that are still relevant today.
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be.”
“The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.”
“When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.”
“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”
“It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.”
“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”
“My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.”
“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.”
“The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”
“Banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”
“A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.”
I believe I told all of you that I was a teacher at a community college in Orlando, from 2001 to 2006. It was a lot of fun, but they paid me by how many credit hours I taught, and only once did they give me enough classes in a semester to pay the bills, so I was always looking for a second job on the side. Therefore, when I got the job offer that brought me to Lexington, it didn’t take me as long to make up my mind as you might expect. Yeah, I know, some people still think I was mad to move from Florida to Kentucky, when more people do the opposite; well, I always had to be different somehow.
Anyway, I taught a computer course designed for education majors, and here is the last website I set up for the class:
In the course of a semester, I gave my students three projects:
Posters. I did that because, contrary to what the textbook might say, there is still a place for low-tech teaching aids, especially when the high-tech equipment doesn’t work.
PowerPoint presentations.
Simple webpages.
One month before I quit teaching, I discovered some funny videos about webpage design, from Vincent Flanders at Webpages That Suck, so I got to use those the last time I taught the course. Now I found a funny video like that about making PowerPoint presentations, and I wish I had that when I was a teacher, too. From the start, I have felt that a joke or two goes a long way towards teaching a lesson that the class will remember. The video is done by Don McMillan, a stand-up comedian who uses PowerPoint in his shows. It is called “Life After Death by PowerPoint”; you can also find it under the name “How NOT to Use PowerPoint.” If you’re a PowerPoint user, watch and enjoy!
Oh, boy, some Israelis are hitting Obama where it really hurts — in the ego. You may remember how in 2005, in a move for peace, then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon dismantled all Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip, and a few in the West Bank, and relocated the inhabitants elsewhere. How did that go? Not too good! The move did not make the Palestinians any more peaceful (in fact, they’ve been launching rockets from Gaza into Sderot and Askelon since then), and the last I heard, some of the uprooted settlers were still living in hotels, without new homes or jobs.
I don’t think any US administration since 1967 has liked the settlements. Most, if not all of our leaders have called them an “obstacle to peace.” Well, I have met the people from the settlements on several occasions, and they aren’t all that different from us. They don’t want to exploit/bully the Arabs around; they just want to build homes where God told their ancestors to live. My former pastor in Florida said Israel is the only place in today’s world where building houses is seen as an act of aggression. There you can see the main difference between the settlers and most modern-day Americans — these are people with real faith. And if you look at pictures of the largest settlements, like Ariel or Kedumim, you might think you are looking at a suburb in southern California.
The current US president is probably the most hostile of all, when it comes to the settlements. Just the other day I heard about a disturbing meeting where Mr. Obama invited a bunch of American Jewish leaders to the White House, but they were mostly liberal Jewish leaders. Real Zionists, those groups that truly want to see a Jewish state built on Biblical principles (the kind of Jews I know best), were not invited.
Now a group of settlers are rebuilding Homesh, one of the settlements that was closed in 2005, and they are renaming it after the president! Here’s the story:
Jewish Settlers Launch ‘Obama Hilltop Project’ ( Compares Obama to Pharaoh in Book of Exodus )
Tel Aviv – Radical Jewish settlers overnight vowed to respond to US President Barack Obama’s stance against Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian areas, by rebuilding one in the northern West Bank, evacuated in 2005. Homesh was one of four West Bank settlements uprooted by former Israeli premier Ariel Sharon as part of his unilateral pullout from the Gaza Strip and a small area in the northern West Bank.
Settler leaders published a message to Obama, slamming him for his pressure against Israel on the issue of settlement construction.
“Mr. President, your policy that aims to destroy the Jewish communities of Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem will no longer go unchallenged,” said the message, using the Jewish Biblical names for the southern and northern West Bank.
It called Obama’s objection to Israeli construction in these areas “an affront” to history and the Jewish religion.
The message even compared Obama to the Biblical Pharaoh of the book of Exodus who kept the Jewish people in bondage.
“Your objection to Jewish childbearing (natural growth) in these areas is reminiscent of Pharaoh’s order to drown all the first-born children of Israel during the slavery in Egypt,” said the message, sent to reporters late Thursday.
“Mr. President, we hereby launch the “Homesh – Obama Hilltop Project,” announced the message, adding this meant that the signatories would “rally the worldwide pro-Israel community to support the rebirth” of the evacuated settlement.
The initiative is supported by such pro-settler groups the Land of Israel Committee of North America, the Shomron Liaison Office, and Homesh First.
They have launched a website,obamahill.tk, on which visitors are asked to make a donation of 10 US dollars to help rebuild Homesh.
My current pastor, Dave McCowan, has spent most of his life in other cities and other states, but quite a few of his ancestors lived right here, in central Kentucky. For the past year he has been exploring the rural parts of Fayette, Clark and Madison counties, looking for their graves. Last spring, for example, he found two great-grandparents buried in a cemetery off Todds Rd, only a mile or so east of the path I usually take to work on most mornings.
Now Pastor Dave has found the grave of his oldest ancestor in Kentucky, Hancock Taylor (1738-1774). Taylor, the uncle of future president Zachary Taylor, was part of a surveying team when Virginia started to settle this territory. On this day in 1774, he was shot in the back by an Indian, where the Kentucky River flows into the Ohio River. He was brought to the neighborhood where the town of Richmond, KY would someday be built, but died twelve days later, and was buried there. Thus, Taylor was also the first white man killed in Kentucky.
Now a week ago, Pastor Dave did his own search. He heard that the property containing the grave used to belong to EKU, but now it’s a farm. On his first visit, he was told it was next to the fence, but didn’t find it, because only the owner of the farm knew for sure, and he wasn’t there. On the second visit, the owner told him to follow the fence for 200 yards, and sure enough, he found a small cairn of stones marking the spot (those stones stayed after the original tombstone disappeared). Here is the letter Pastor Dave sent me last night, with a picture of him standing by the discovery. Quote:
Dear Family,
Today along with the help of cousin Steven Taylor of Melbourne, Australia (who just happened to be in town), I found the grave of one of American’s great explorers and pioneers Hancock Taylor. Hancock Taylor died in July 29, 1774, from gunshot wounds by Indians at the mouth of the Kentucky River. His brother was Richard Lee Taylor who was the father of Zachary Taylor—the 12th President of the United States. Both Hancock and Richard were first cousins to our 5G Grandfather James Taylor, III.
If you want to read more about the life of Hancock Taylor, which I would highly recommend, see the following links.
* American Historic Services
* Fincastle Surverys
* William Haydom, Kentucky Adventurer, 1740-1819
* Hancock Taylor’s long rifle
Mystery Solved
Dear Family,
Today along with the help of cousin Steven Taylor of Melbourne, Australia (who just happened to be in town), I found the grave of one of American’s great explorers and pioneers Hancock Taylor. Hancock Taylor died in July 29, 1774, from gunshot wounds by Indians at the mouth of the Kentucky River. His brother was Richard Lee Taylor who was the father of Zachary Taylor—the 12th President of the United States. Both Hancock and Richard were first cousins to our 5G Grandfather James Taylor, III.
If you want to read more about the life of Hancock Taylor, which I would highly recommend, see the following links.
Unquote: This morning the radio announced several birthdays and anniversaries. Kids will like to know that Spongebob Squarepants has been on TV for ten years, and it was thirty years ago today that McDonald’s introduced the Happy Meal. Yeah, I remember when my daughter rated restaurants by what kind of toy they put with their food (LOL). Art Linkletter is 97 years old, and Phyllis Diller is 92; did you know both of them are still around? But in the scheme of things, the “big picture,” so to speak, today’s 235th anniversary of when Hancock Taylor fell is probably more important, and maybe more interesting, too.
Today I mostly have science news to report and comment on. First, Egyptian archaeologists have dug up the largest fortress in Egypt’s eastern Nile delta, at Tel Dafna near the Suez Canal. Most of the construction work on the fort was done by Ramses II of the XIX dynasty, and Psammetich I of the XXVI dynasty. No surprise there; both pharaohs wanted to keep an eye out for invaders from Asia, and Herodotus mentions a fort on this spot that guarded Egypt from the Arabs and the Assyrians.
What surprised me was that the fort had been discovered before, by Sir Flinders Petrie in 1886 (see my messages from April 24 and April 30 for an exhibit of other artifacts Petrie found), only to be lost again. It must be because Egyptologists have been going over the country for 200 years, but Egypt seems to be the only place where it is common to make the same discovery more than once. For example, KV 5, the tomb of the sons of Ramses II, was first entered by Giovanni Belzoni in the early 1800s, but when he didn’t find anything interesting, everyone forgot about it until Kent Weeks started digging there in the 1980s. And the mummy that is now thought to be Queen Hatshepsut was found in 1903, left behind and forgotten in its tomb, found again in 1989, and finally identified in 2007. Who’d have thought anyone would lose track of the body of Egypt’s greatest queen?
Meanwhile, a new theory has come out suggesting that at the end of the Triassic period (180 million years ago, if you believe in evolution), many dinosaurs became extinct because of air pollution, and runaway global warming, caused by burning coal and oil deposits. Dang those SUV-driving Plateosauri! Is it just a coincidence that this theory gets announced now, when a bad economy and an unusually cold year are making the public skeptical of global warming in our own time? Just last Monday there was frost reported in Minnesota, and temperatures as low as 47 degrees in northern New England.
Speaking of Minnesota, did you hear what their new senator said? This week the big political news is the confirmation hearings for Judge Sonia Sotomayor. I wasn’t planning to comment on the process, because I feel she’s as good as in, whether I like it or not. The Republicans don’t have the votes to keep her from going to the Supreme Court, or even to launch a filibuster, so I expect her to get the job as long as she doesn’t do something stupid.
Well, somebody did something stupid, all right, but it wasn’t Sotomayor, it was Al Franken. In the video below, Franken grills her about a fictional case, that appeared on his favorite episode of the Perry Mason show. Let’s hope the people of Minnesota are proud. I don’t know which is worse, that the Republicans let Franken steal the election, or that half the Minnesota voters think this failed comedian is fit to be a senator.
I heard on the radio that another Harry Potter movie hit the theaters today. I haven’t been following the series; this is the fifth, right? Just yesterday I got a comment about the funny Harry Potter Message I posted last year; no doubt the author found this blog with a search engine.
I remember when the first Harry Potter movie came out, my daughter Lindy asked me if I wanted to go see it. I said no, but I wanted to see “The Lord of the Rings,” because I read Tolkien in college and thought he wrote better fantasy stories. Thus, I took her to all three LOTR movies, and that was that. She did get to see Harry Potter at a later date, but that’s another story.
Also, there’s a strange ad campaign going around featuring the word “it.” I saw the first sign in my neighborhood last weekend, now there are several around town. They show “it” in a pink ball, tell you “it’s” coming soon, and direct you to ItLexington.com. Well, I checked the website, and frankly, I don’t get “it.” I think “it” has something to do with a church on the south side of Lexington (the big one that used to be a warehouse), but I’m not sure. Maybe if I was using Twitter, “it” would be more clear. At any rate, the authors of the website claim they’ll announce “it” on August 1, so we should find out then, if not sooner.
But whatever “it” turns out to be, I can think of a group of knights that won’t be amused (see below, LOL).
The title reflects one of my pet peeves. I guess it’s because I’m the opposite, preferring to go all the way back to the beginning for a better view of the “big picture.” I remember the time last year when my pastor was preaching a sermon about TV game shows, and Bob Barker’s name came up, because he had just retired from “The Price Is Right.” The pastor asked us, “Which game show did Bob Barker host?”, and without hesitation I shouted, “Truth Or Consequences!” Technically my answer was correct (Barker did host “Truth Or Consequences” back in the 1960s, before doing “The Price Is Right”), but of course that wasn’t the answer my pastor had in mind.
Now with history, most people seem to pay far more attention to recent events than ancient ones. Most history books, for instance, may not have much to say about the world or a nation before 1900, but when they reach the twentieth century, boy do they cover each year in detail, especially if photographs are available! And ever notice how a lot of folks act like history began around the time they were born, or not long before that? Billy Joel, for instance, is sixty years old, and his song “We Didn’t Start the Fire” rattles off the names of key people and events, from the late 1940s to the late 1980s, so I believe he thinks that way. No mention of how the fire (meaning world crises) started in the first place, except that he doesn’t claim responsibility.
Anyway, I’m bringing this up because about twice a month I go over to CivFanatics.com, to browse their forums, because they have a few interesting historical discussions. I was originally attracted to the lessons posted by one Kafka2, under the title “Historical Filth.” What a hoot those stories were! Unfortunately, I haven’t seen anything new in this forum from Kafka2 since 2005, and it has been two years since I saw stories from him anywhere else (they’re still in the sticky thread, though). I guess I show up anyway in the hope that he might come back.
On my latest visit I saw a discussion on who was the worst running mate in the history of US presidential elections. A variant on the more common discussions about who we think is the best/worst president. Just about everyone participating in that discussion has nominated Sarah Palin or Dan Quayle. I can understand them thinking that way, if they’re liberals, but why are they only considering veeps who are alive? Only one thought enough like me to suggest a choice from the distant past, Richard Johnson, and another suggested Thomas Eagleton, but that’s it.
I can’t log in to post a message, but if I could, I’d tell everyone, “Why can’t you look past your own lifetime? There’s one vice president who really stands out because he was so awful — Aaron Burr!” Burr couldn’t be a running mate for Thomas Jefferson, because of the way elections were handled in those days, but consider the ways in which he got to be the worst vice president in US history:
He tied up the 1800 election for weeks, because the Electoral College voted a tie: 73 votes for Jefferson and 73 for Burr.
He shot the man who kept him from beating Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton.
Years later, he tried to break away some southern states to form his own country.
Even on the worst of days, today’s Democrats and Republicans haven’t done that, except for all the recounts over Florida in 2000.
Yes, the very light ginger ale that is bottled just east of here, in Winchester, KY, was invented on this day in 1926. That means Ale-8-One is 83 years old. Everybody here claims to like it, so it’s the official soft drink of central Kentucky. Congratulations! Unfortunately it is only distributed in about 3/4 of Kentucky and a small part of Indiana and Ohio, so if you live outside that area, you’ll have to go to their online store to buy some.
If Ale-8-One is the official drink, then our official snack is also a locally-made product: Mingua Brothers Beef Jerky, which comes from Paris, KY. All the locals claim to like that, too. Well, maybe not the vegetarians, but I haven’t met any in Kentucky yet, except for the owner of the Indian store near us.
By the way, I forgot to tell everyone about the University of Kentucky’s latest advertising gimmick. If you are near a UK billboard and tune your radio to 1630 AM, you will hear the fight song they play at football games. I heard about it on the radio last Friday, so I tried it the next time I drove past the billboard on the south side of town, and sure enough, it works.
Go Cats! I understand the University of Louisville has musical billboards, too, so now I’m wondering if any colleges out of state are doing this as well?
The Xenohistorian Weblog 