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Jan 1, 2022

New Years Day 2022 Waiting on the Coup

 

 
So it is new years 2022 and what have we done?  
 
Another year over and a new one spun
with miss-information and hate
 
last year at this time
we celebrated the defeat of Donald Trump
 
this year 
 
we fear his return
 
Has our country really come to this?
 
a country destroyed by fear, white lies, and God?
 
where once there was hope?
 
hope in people
 
hope in neighbors
 
hope in generations.
 
We are now divided by economics in the name of God, and baby killers

chalk outlines on a sidewalk, eye black crosses on a face, 
and save the planet, save the planet,
but first,
save the race!

In my lifetime I've watched us go from peace on earth and good will to all

to, "eat shit mother fucker, I'm taking what's mine,
 
that's all."

No one cares about getting along.  

No one has the energy to fight Fake News

and no one sees the whole
 
from their narrow point of views.
 
Yes, it's New Years Day, 2022.
 

waiting on the coup

waiting on the coup


~~ a Poem by Dr Eso Terry and his Traveling Band of Gypsies. 

 
The first day of January was dedicated by the ancient Romans to the god Janus (whom the month is named after.)  Janus possesses two identical faces looking in opposite directions: one to the past, and the other to the future.  He is a god of gates and doorways, and a deity associated with journeys and the beginning, and ending, of things.  

 





Ces't tout!


Dec 24, 2021

The Origins of Christmas: Satan and Coca-cola.

 

So it is Christmas.  Now, I love the "Peace on Earth and Good Will to...  All" as much as the next guy, but I also know this day has nothing to do with Jesus.  Now, if that's how you want to celebrate Christmas, so be it, I prefer to celebrate the inclusive Christmas without Jesus for its humanistic qualities.  Everyone knows Jesus wasn't born on December 25th.  Historian may argue about why this lie came to be, but nonetheless, all agree it is a lie.  December 25th was adopted by the Christian Church sometime in the 4th century.  Before that, December 25th was part of the Roman Saturnalia celebration that involved feasting, merry-making, and gift-giving.  But like everything else in history, i.e., Football, Beer, and Elvis, Christians change things to fit their beliefs instead of letting things be as they are.  Blasphemy?  Maybe.  Truth is, Christmas is nothing but Blasphemy.  

The origins of Christmas began with Odin, who was the god of intoxicating drink and ecstasy, as well as the god of winter death. Because the Feast of Saturnalia dealt with all those things, he naturally became the most popular god of Saturnalia. 

 
Odin was a tall, old man that had a long white beard and carried a spear.  Odin traveled around the world on a WHITE HORSE that had eight legs. This is where the eight reindeer came from. With Santa, originally there were eight reindeer. Rudolph was added later in modern times.


In virtually every version of Claus, he carried along with him a dark helper.  Eventually, these became the elves.  Originally, however, they were a demon looking helper that stood next to Claus with a horrid red tongue hanging from its mouths and it was called Krampus.  If the children weren’t good, Krampus  would beat the children.  So, the good guy or Savior, Odin who eventually became St. Nicholas, would come and give you gifts if you were good. If you were bad, Krampus disciplined you.  

The picture upbove shows the naughty children being carried away by a Krampus, who is a combination of a human and goat. We see this all throughout history, a human mixed with a goat. The picture on the left is a modern day picture of a festival in Germany where they continue to do this celebration and bring out Krampus or Santa’s helpers to this day. 
St. Nicholas and his demons are still celebrated in Austria, Hungary, Germany, Italy, and more. Every time you would see St. Nicholas he would be accompanied by his bells. They use to have bells that would hang from their necks. You would hear the bells as they announced to the next town that they were coming.  This is where we get the references to the bells of Christmas.
How did the progression of Odin to Santa Claus happen? Well, by the 1500’s in Holland, St. Nicholas became Sinterklaas; a kind and wise old man with a white beard, white dress, red cloak, a crosier and riding the skies and roofs of the houses on his white horse, accompanied by his Black Jacks, leaving gifts for people under his sacred tree, the fir tree. He would visit you on his birthday (December 25th), and give you gifts if you had been good or if you had been bad, his Black Jacks would beat you.
By the 1700’s a Dutchman immigrated to North America and brought his SinterClaus with him. The English dialect was then changed to “Santa Claus.”

In 1930 a designer for Coca-Cola Company was trying to get people to buy their drink in the winter time. They took their company colors of red and white, borrowed the Sinterklaas story, changed a few things and out came the modern Santa Claus complete with reindeer and elves. The 1900 designer borrowed a picture from the 1800’s, modernized, added the colors, and out came the Coca-Cola Santa Claus today complete with the long white beard, chubby cheeks, and red and white suit.
IN THE 1970’S THE SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL FORMALLY STATED THAT NO ROMAN CATHOLIC BISHOP BY THE NAME OF NICHOLAS EVER EXISTED!
They down graded his saint hood because there was evidence that was presented to the Vatican that he never even existed. Vatican further confessed that the legends contributed to this “saint” had no Christian origin, and probably came from pagan traditions!
The evidence showed this saint was made up and connected to the sun god worship of Odin but had been Christianized and a saint was made out of him. Eventually, the colors got changed, the elves came into the picture and they went from being evil to cute little guys that make toys which is another American modernization.


Now you know the real origins of Christmas: 
Happy Xmas. 
 

Dec 23, 2021

Comparing Druids and Native Americans This Christmas

 

So, it is a fact that the Christmas we celebrate today begun with the Druids, and so let's have a look at the Druids.  First of all, most of the historical facts we have about the Druids are bull crap because they were written by the Greeks and Romans who were extremely hostile to the Celtic people, and so reading those accounts of the Druid people written in the history books is like reading Davy Crockett's writings to understand the Native Americans.  


 "We shot them like dogs," Crockett said after he had slaughtered 186 men, woman, and children in the Creek War.  

The Romans confiscated the lives of the Druid people much as the European Settlers confiscated the lives of Native Americans. In both cases a spiritually dead group of people took over a spiritually alive people.  The Romans were materialistic, the Druids spiritual. The American Settlers were greedy-land grabbers, the Native people, spiritual.  For the Romans and Americans Settlers the State was a monolithic structure spread over territories deliberately organized into a hierarchy.  With the Druids and Native Americans the State was a freely consented moral order with an entirely mythical central idea.  The Romans and American Settlers based their law on the private ownership of land, with property rights entirely vested in the head of the family; the Druids and Native Americans considered ownership COLLECTIVE.  The Romans and American Settlers looked upon women as bearers of children and objects of pleasure, while the Druids and Native Americans included women in their political and religious life.  Is it any wonder that the spiritual peoples would have to be "Christianized" in the name of God, or slaughtered.  

That's right, Capitalized: the gift that keeps giving.  

And, least we forget, here is the Druid roots of Christmas:


The roots of the Christmas traditions that we recognize today can be traced back to pre-Christian celebrations of the Winter solstice. The solstice is the twice yearly event when the sun appears to be at its highest or lowest point above the horizon. In the northern hemisphere the Winter solstice usually occurs annually between December 20 and December 23.

The Winter solstice was seen by the ancient Celts as one of the most significant times of the year. The Neolithic monuments of Newgrange in Éire, Maes Howe in Orkney, Scotland and Bryn Celli Ddu in Ynys Môn, Wales are examples of burial chambers scattered throughout the Celtic nations constructed to capture the full impact of sun’s rays during the solstices.

Druids, the priestly class in ancient Celtic society, celebrated the festival of Alban Arthuan (also known as Yule) at the time of the Winter solstice.  It was on this day that they ceremonially gathered mistletoe from oak trees.  A practice described in the writings of Roman historian Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus AD 23 – August 25, AD 79).

The name Christmas is from the Mass of Christ (Christ-Mass).  The actual date of the birth of Jesus is not given in the Bible.  The spread of Christianity during the first millennium (January 1st AD to December 1000 AD of the Julian calendar) was aided by the new religion adapting to the ceremonies and traditions of the existing religions.  At times the early Christians also adopted existing deities to ease the transition from old beliefs to new ones, as is thought to be the case with Brigid the Celtic fertility goddess who became known to Christians as Saint Brigid.

So when celebrating Christmas the traditional trappings that go with this festive season have roots that go far back into Celtic history.  The Mistletoe gathered by the Druids for its magical and health giving properties.  The Yule log burnt by the Celts to counter the darkness of mid-Winter when they thought the sun stood still for twelve days and to bring good luck.  The Holly and Ivy; evergreens that Celts saw as important to keep evil spirits at bay. The Tree decorated with symbols of solar objects and gifts to Celtic gods and goddesses.

 



 

Dec 16, 2021

December 16th, Poke Man, tax Bezos

On this day in 1997 that classic parental saying that  "Television will rot your brain" came true.  Over seven hundred Japanese schoolchildren became dizzy and nauseated while watching an episode Pokémon.  Some even had seizures.  Hospitals across the country were inundated with retching, convulsing kids, and a few parents, in scenes reminiscent of a really bad Japanese sci-fi movie.
 
 


"I was shocked to see my daughter lose consciousness," said Yukiko Iwasaki, whose eight-year-old suffered a seizure.  "She started to breathe only when I hit her on the back."

The spasmodic mass reaction was triggered about 20 minutes into Pokémon episode 38, "Computer Warrior Porigon," which, like other episodes of the top-rated show, was produced in an intense version of animation known as anime.  A vivid explosion, with pulsating strobe-light effects, apparently walloped those kids with their eyes glued to their television sets on the evening of December 16.

Warning, the following episode has been know to cause seizures in young children.  Watch at your own risk:
 




 
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  Also on this December the 16th, I think we should remember the hungry:  it was this day in the year 2007 that experts from the world Bank, with the assistance of the International Monetary Fund and a few United Nations agencies, updated their statistical tables from the Regan/Bush era projections to admit that the estimated numbers of poor people in the world was five-hundred million more than previously recorded.

As Eduardo Galeano said in his book Children of the Days,  "They, the poor, already knew."



Update, the number is 736 million as of 2015.  That's right, 736 million people will go hungry tonight while we spend millions to send an ex-football player into space for the experience. 


 Maybe f&*king Bezos should send one of the 736 million poverty kids on a space flight instead, at least they'd get a meal out of it. 

All I got to say: Tax the bastard. 

Or at least make him watch this:


 


 


Dec 14, 2021

December 15th, oddities.

 



On or near this day in 1942, the English Poet Keith Douglas found himself in the Western Desert during the Second World War fighting in the North African campaign.  These are his observations that he must have been writing for a book one day:


I looked down into the face of a man lying hunched up in a pit.  His expression of agony seemed so acute and urgent, his stare so wild and despairing, that for a moment I thought him alive.  He was like a cleverly posed waxwork, for his position suggested a paroxysm, an orgasm of pain.  He seemed to move and writhe. But he was stiff.  The dust which powdered his face like an actor's lay on his wide open eyes, whose stare held my gaze like the Ancient Mariner's.  He had tried to cover his wounds with towels against the flies.  His haversack lay open, from which he had taken towels and dressings.  His water bottle lay tilted with the cork out.  Towels and haversack were dark with dried blood, darker still with a great concourse of flies.  This picture, as they say, told a story.  It filled me with useless pity....

Keith Douglas died in Normandy two years later.

Enjoy the Holiday Seasons and be thankful for the peace we have this year.   It's Yuge!


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Speaking of war, Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine were Hollywood's feuding sisters--leading ladies locked in a bitter rivalry that reportedly went all the way back to childhood.  "I married first," Fontaine once commented on the enduring sibling spat, "won the Oscar before Olivia did, and if I die first, she'll undoubtedly be livid because I beat her to it!" On December 15, 2013, at age 96, Fontaine did indeed beat de Havilland to the grave.

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In 1939 on this date, the American film "Gone with the Wind" premieres, in Atlanta Georgia.  The movie, based on Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, became an instant hit, breaking all previous box-office records and winning nine Oscars.
 
Clark Gabble
                                                                                                
Was the most famous “love child” of Hollywood’s Golden Era actually conceived when actress Loretta Young was “date-raped’’ by the legendary Clark Gable? That bombshell accusation broke Sunday at Buzzfeed, and it seems to me there are reasons to be somewhat skeptical.
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In case you forgot, December 15 is the first of seven Halcyon Days prior to the winter solstice when, according to legend, the halcyon bird creates a time of tranquility by calming the wind and waves.  During this peaceful period, the kingfisher was able to lay her eggs in peace.  A magical bird, the kingfisher is a symbol of the Greek goddess Alcyon, daughter of the wind king.






December 14: things to know at a boring art show.

 


It was the last thing Kaiser Wilhelm II needed after a gay sex scandal had already embroiled not only the highest echelons of imperial Germany but also the sovereign himself.  On Novermber 14, 1908, Dietrich Graf von Julsen-Haeseler, chief of the German Imperial Military Cabinet, dropped dead at a private party for the kaiser while performing a balleric pas seul, or solo dance -- in a tutu.

Homosexuality had long been an unmentionable subject in Germany, one that the press avoided assiduously--until 1906, that is, when a journalist by the name of Maximilian Harden launched a campaign to expose the sexual proclivities of the kaiser's inner circle.  And much of his scoop was provided by none other than Otto von Bismarck, the "Iron Chancellor," who, like Harden, had vigorously opposed Wilhelm II's policies and was dismissed by the kaiser as a result.  In a letter to his son, Bismarck wrote of the relationship the kaiser enjoyed with his devoted friend Philip Frederick Alexander, Prince of Eulenburg and Hertefeld--the details of which could "not be confided to paper."

Harden was wise enough to know that any compromising insinuations about the monarch's personal life with Eulenburg would be foolhardy, so he oped to discredit Wilhelm by disclosing instead the homosexual relationship between Eulenburg and the kaiser's adjunct, Count Kuno von Moltke-- or "Sweetie," as Harden referred to him--the military commander of Berlin.  In so doing, historian Alexandria Richie wrote, Harden "broke on of the most sacred taboos in imperial Germany."

Kaiser Wilhelm sought to insulate himself from the emerging scandal by distancing himself from his loyal friend Eulenburg and dismissing Moltke.  But neigher man was prepared to slink away with his reputation so thoroughly shredded.  What resulted was a flurry of libel suits, filled with salacious details, that sent the press into an unprecedented feeding frenzy.

"German newspapers were full of the story," wrote historian James Steakley, "and it dominated their headlines for months; an anti-homosexual witch-hunt of unparalleled proportions was unleashed.  Nealy every high government official and military officer was suspected or accused of homosexuality."  A number committed suicide in the face of such shame; Wilhelm II suffered a nervous breakdown.

"It has been a very difficult year which has caused me an infinite amount of worry,"  the kaiser wrote in December 1907.  "A trusted group fo friends was suddenly broken up through ... insolence, slander and lying.  To see the names of one's friends dragged through the gutters of Europe without being able or entitled to help is terrible."

The, just as the scandal seemed to be simmering down, Dietrich Graf von Hulsen-Haeseler performed his fatal piouette.  Worse, rigor mortis set in before he could easily be extricated from his tutu.

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On this day in 1940, 500 German bombers pound the English city of Coventry.  The raids killed over 1,000 civilians and destroyed most of the medieval cathedral.  This raid followed Adolf Hitler's public promise that an attack on the capital of the Nazi movement would not go unpunished.  Historians surmise that Prime Minister Winston Churchill had advance knowledge of the raids and chose not to inform city officials.  This seemingly barbaric decision was an act of tactical genius.  Had Churchill informed officials, partial evacuation of the city would have been ordered.  German pilots would have noticed and reported back to Hitler.  This would surely have revealed Ultra, Great Britains' top-secret system for decoding German communications.

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On this day in 1945, Tony Hulman buys the dilapidated, disused Indianapolis Motor Speedway from Edward Rickenbacher.  Renovations allowed the post-war resumption of the famous 500-mile races. 

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In ancient times, the Feast of the Musicians, a Druidic festival dedicated to barbs and musicians, took place on this date.  It's celebrated today by some neo-pagans with offerings to the Celtic gods of music.  It is customary to gather around a bonfire for an evening of songs and storytelling, ending with everyone tossing a wish into the flames.



Dec 13, 2021

December 13: a St Lucy's Day Greeting



 

So it is December 13, the real day that begins the Christmas season to me.  In Sweden they celebrate Saint Lucia's Day (St. Lucy's Day). 

St. Lucy's Day is a festival observed throughout Sweden in which the first-born daughter of each family wears a flowing white gown and a crown of candles around her head, obviously in reference to the ancient Pagan symbols of fire and life-giving light.  The daughter traditionally serves her mother and father breakfast in bed.

So the story goes something like this: around the year 283 when Christianity was starting to catch on and replace the earth religions,  a Christian virgin named Lucy was offered to a Pagan for marriage by her dying mother, but, before the God-forsaken Pagan could get his dirty hands on Lucy, Saint Agatha appeared to her in a dream and told her that her mom would be heeled and that she didn't have to marry the mean old Pagan, and could remain a devout virgin the rest of her life!  When her Pagan suitor heard of this, he demanded she denounce her beliefs or be sold into prostitution.  She refused and the shit hit the fan: a soldier stabbed her in the neck with his sword to stop her from talking bad about the Pagan Gods, but Lucy survived and kept on stating her love for the Pope.  This infuriated the soldiers and so another stabbed her in the eyes which bled like crazy before miraculously healing.  In other words, the bitch just wouldn't die, that is, until a priest came along and read her the Last Rites.   Then all was well, so the story goes.  

Another story says St. Lucy hid in the catacombs of the city attending to injured Christians with candles on her head.  

The truth of the matter is that around the year 283, when the Christian Calendar was being used by some while most of the world was still on a lunar calendar, December 13 was the on the winter solstice and so it was the shortest day of the year and everyone outside had candles on their heads.  And Lucy, well, an inscription in Syracuse dedicated to Euskia mentions St Lucy's Day as a local feast that dates back to the 4th century A.D., which states that "Euskia, irreproachable, lived a good and pure life for about 25 years, and died on my Saint Lucy's feast day, she for whom I cannot find appropriate words of praise: she was a Christian, faithful, perfection itself, full of thankfulness and gratitude"
 
So, the celebration was going on before Lucy came along, but, in a time when living to thirty was considered a long time, she lived a good life for twenty-five years, apparently, a rare thing back then.  In other words she was a good woman and should be remembered as such.  So, put those candles on your head in honor of her and pray to whom ever you want, winter is here!
 
Live, love, and prosper.  And to all, a good night.
 
~~ Eso Terry 


Dec 12, 2021

Tax The Bastards or Cease to Exist!

 

I made the mistake of reading an article titled "How The Super Rich Do Disney" before bed last night and couldn't sleep a wink; I kept waking up wondering, "Why do they need their own private Disney Land?" Isn't ours good enough for them? 

 

I am not sure why it bothered me so much, but it did.  I mean, I've learned to accept the facts that they don't go to the same prisons as we do for committing the same crimes we do, nor do they drive on the same roads as we do by building expensive tollways that lead to their gated communities... but a private f*(king Disney Land?   

Here are the details:  the secret Disney Experience cost around $33,000.00 a day, and is based on the travels of Mr. Walt Disney himself.  Yes, the sexist, racist Walt Disney, just ask Meryl Streep; but then, what white guy wasn't a racist in 1952?  And get this, they were allowed alcohol too from the beginning which wasn't available to the rest of us until until 2019.

Now, the reason this fact kept me up last night wasn't that they have this privilege, but that it is more proof that they are setting up a private world for after the bottom falls out of the economy for the rest of us; and trust me, it will.  Every economist not being paid by Fox News or Citi-Bank Consortium knows that the rich can't continue owning 99% of the wealth while the rest of us quibble over the measly 1% that trickles out their excesses in the form of a luxury tax.  The system is designed to fail.  And instead of preventing this from happening by giving up a portion of their wealth -- which will never happen -- they are willing to let the world around them crash while they watch in comfort from behind the scenes.  

Shit, I've told you before about their private space program to fly them away to their luxury space stations when it gets really bad.  What do you think cryptocurrency is really about?  Cryptocurrency is a place to keep their money safe from the rest of us when they start their own 1% government.  It's not a Republican/Democrat thing.  It's not a white/black thing. It is the rich keeping us down.  Period. 

Wake up, tax the bastard or cease to exist.  Even Jesus knew this when he said, "Give to Caesar What Is Caesars."  Jesus knew without the rich paying their share, society would fail.  

Enough said, tax the bastards or cease to exist.

   

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 And, in case you missed it, here's some words I wrote regarding December 12th a few years ago. 

 

 
 
Guglielmo Marconi



On this day in 1901, Italian physicist and radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi succeeds in sending the first radio transmission across the Atlantic Ocean, disproving detractors who told him then the curvature of Earth would limit transmission to 200 miles or less.  The message--simply the Morse code for s-- traveled more than 2,000 miles from Poldhu in Cornwall, England, to Newfoundland, Canada.  That successful endeavor aroused widespread interest in Marconi and his wireless company and won him worldwide fame.


Mae West
 
A few years after that on this day in 1937, sex symbol Mae West was invited to perform her usual shtick of purring enticements and double entendres on radio's Chase & Sanborn Hour, a weekly variety show broadcast on Sunday nights.  Playing a seductive Eve in one sketch, and flirting with ventriloquist Edgar Bergen's wooden sidekick, Charlie McCarthy, in another, the sultry actress delivered as bawdily as might be expected.  At one point, for example, she reminded the puppet that he had already kissed her in her apartment.  "I got marks to prove it," she said.  "An' splinters, too."

NBC had approved the script, but when a coordinated protest by the Legion of Decency and other morality Christian groups erupted, the network immediately disowned the star and declared her an "unfit radio personality."  n a spineless attempt to shift the blame, network executives claimed West took the script they had found acceptable to unexpected levels of indecency by the way she delivered her lines.  Subsequently, even the mention of her name was banned on NBC radio.  Fortunately, there were more reasonable observers, like the Chicago Daily News, which excoriated the network's cowardice in an editorial:

"NBC and the commercial sponsors of the program knew Mae West.  They knew her technique.  They'd heard her and seen her.  They coached her in rehearsals.  But when the public protests swamped them they pretended they had Mae all mixed up with Mary Pickford or Shirley Temple."



 

Dec 10, 2021

The Noble Peace Prize 2021

So it is the day for the Noble Peace Prize, December 10th.  Each year I wait to see who win's the great award.  This year... wait for it...  Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression; that's right, that thing that allows me to blog to you a few times a week... well, at least in theory, for if I were to tell you how I really feel about things... wait, I do... silly me, we are lucky to still have our freedoms that they don't in countries like the Philippines and of course, Donald Trumps: Russia. 

Ressa, 58, a former CNN bureau chief in the Philippines, and Rappler, the news site she founded in 2012, have faced multiple criminal charges and investigations after publishing stories critical of President Rodrigo Duterte and his bloody drugs war.  Yet, she keeps writing. 

And, equally as impressive, the other winner, Muratov is the founder and editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, one of Russia’s last big newspapers to regularly criticize President Vladimir Putin, and which has reported extensively on government corruption in the country.

Both of these journalist are fighting against governments that use lies and fake news to keep in power... sound familiar?  Yes, like our very own Fox News. 

Okay, here's some fun facts about the Nobel Prize:

The award, given every year on December 10, is supposed to recognize the very best in human accomplishment in various fields of endeavor.  Giants like Einstein, Mandela, Churchill, and Curie have all been named Nobel laureates.  But so have some vastly less deserving fold who, by virtue of winning the Nobel, gave the prestigious prize a bit of a black eye.  Among them:

Fritz Haber

  Fritz Haber, 1918, chemistry, for the synthesis of ammonia from nitrogen in the air.  Thanks to Haber's discovery, which allowed for the development of industrial fertilizers, the world became far better fed.  Yet this immensely beneficial contribution to mankind was made well before World War I, by which time the chemist was redirecting his creative energy toward something his own wife condemned as "perversion of the ideals of science" and  "a sign of barbarity, corruption the very discipline which ought to bring new insights into life" -- the annihilation of Germany's enemies on the battlefield with poisonous gas.

Antonio Egas Moniz

Antonio Egas Moniz, 1949, medicine, for pioneering the lobotomy.  Besides the fact that this radical brain procedure turned many patients -- including President John F. Kennedy's sister Rosemary-- into near zombies, there was nothing particularly inventive about the drilling holes into the skull and shoving in an instrument to disable the frontal lobes.  n fact, it was kind of medieval-- not like, say, creating the artificial heart (a feat for which Robert Jarvik was egregiously overlooked by the Nobel committee).  And when a place as oppressive and cruel as the Soviet Union bans lobotomies as "contrary to the principles of humanity," as it did in 1950, that might be taken as an indication that this monstrous procedure was bad medicine indeed.

Yasser Arafat

 

Yasser Arafat, 1994, Peace Prize (shared with Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin of Israel).  Yes, it's true that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.  And certainly the Palestinian people have had plenty of legitimate beefs with Israel.  Yet when the massacre of innocents--coupled with hijackings, kidnappings, political assassinations, and other mayhem--becomes the paramount means to an end, as it did for the Palestinian leader, it tends to make a mockery of the Nobel Peace Prize--especially considering the fact that Mahatma Gandhi was never awarded one.

Myron Scholes

 

Myron Scholes and Robert Merton, 1997, economics.  Less than a year after receiving their prize, "for a new method to determine the value of derivatives," as the Nobel announcement read, the laureates' esteemed hedge fund, Long-Term Capital Management, lost $4 billion in six weeks.
(Bad Days in History, Farquhar, Michael).

(See this year's 2021 winners here.)

No conversation of the Nobel Peace Prize is complete without mentioning the year 1978.  For that is the year President Jimmy Carter somehow got Mohamed Anwar al-Sadat and  Menachem Begin together to talk and Egypt became the first Arab country to officially recognize the state of Israel. In return Egypt gained control of the Sinai PeninsulaMohamed Anwar al-Sadat and  Menachem Begin
both shared the Nobel Peace Prize that year.  It was one of the few serious hopes for peace I have seen in my lifetime.  But then....


On 6 October 1981, Sadat was assassinated during the annual victory parade held in Cairo to celebrate Egypt's crossing of the Suez Canal 

 The assassination squad was led by Lieutenant Khalid Islambouli after a fatwā (death sentence) was approved by Omar Abdel-Rahman, "The Blind Sheikh," an Egyptian Muslim leader who was arrested and convicted for the first World Trade Center bombing in February 1993. 

And of course, how can we forget 2009 when President Obama was awarded the prize for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.  Well, that's what they said, truth is it was his award for finally giving us a president of color in the most powerful nation on the planet and the hopes that presented... unfortunately the backlash was Donald Trump which given us the first terrorist attach on a US Government State since the war of 1812 when the British burned our capital. 



Dec 8, 2021

So It is December 8th, Let's Expand.

So it is December 8th and what a day: 
 
 
 
This day is sacred to Astraea, the star maiden, a Greek goddess of justice who chose to live among humans.  She is the virgin goddess of justice, innocence, purity and precision After Pandora's box was opened, Astraea was the last of the gods to abandon Earth.  Funny, but it does seem she comes back now and then, as for example, on this day in 2020 when the Supreme Court denied the Republican Party's bid to reverse the fair election results in Pennsylvania for no other apparent reason than too many people of color had voted, legally.  No shit, that's the only possible reason they had! 


No wonder the Republicans love them some Vladimir Putin, the king of the conservative ideas of a white country with no boundaries for the rich and voice for the poor.  
 


"I ride naked on horse with Trump, because he remind me of beautiful Russian woman."

But I digress.
 
What I want to talk about today is the Chinese news report that "China's moon rover spots a mysterious cube-shaped object...."
 
 
 
Okay, so the big news here is that just maybe the TV Ancient Aliens' stars aren't nuts after all!
 
 
 
Well, accept for David Wilcox, everyone knows he been nuts since joining the January 6th nuts who believed Donald Trump's hair is real!
 
Trump has beautiful hair, like me!

 
 Finally, on this eve of the overturning of Row vs. Wade being argued in the Supreme Court which will set women's rights back fifty years once passed, on this day in 1952 the first acknowledgement of pregnancy on an American television show occurred on the "I Love Lucy" show in an episode titled: "Lucy Is Enceinte" (the word "pregnant" was not allowed).



 

Akhenaten Gave Us the 4th of July

Let's get down to it, the USA is a concept founded way before July 4, 1776.  Thousands of years before Columbus was aware of the existe...

Thanks For Being!

Thanks For Being!