Happy Easter and some thoughts to ponder on Good Friday…..for the best price in town.
Lots of articles in the last week about the flying car. You are bound to have seen them in the papers or on the news channels. I saw many that intimated that this was a really new innovation. Guess what, go back and look at Look or Life magazine in the fifties. They had flying cars then and some were predicting that they would be the wave of the future; the future being defined as the ’70’s or ’80’s. Remember there really isn’t anything new under the Sun. Each generation seems to think it is the first to read and write and know how to invent things.
We’re up to the 100th anniversary of the Titanic sinking. Many headlines reporting on the tragedy used the word “souls” to describe those lost in the cold seas. Interesting that in that age it was not considered unusual or some kind of Judeo-Christian bias with those headlines. It was instinctive in the people of the age to use such language. Even today the airlines and cruise ships still use that phrase (unless they have changed very recently) to denote the number of passengers and crew on board. Of course the word does carry a religious connotation and that is good. Otherwise it would just be bundles of meat on board a ship or plane. You just can’t square the circle with that word in an atheistic world.
Well over 200 years ago scientist were able to figure out that the earth had bulges in its crust and that it was not a perfect sphere but “squashed” a bit at the poles. I marvel that they could make that correct assessment with such primitive tools by our standards. Mostly they used readings of barometric pressure to determine altitude and thus the “bulges” here and there or conversely the flat spaces. This was important to improve the mapping needed for commerce and the correct meridians. They had to be pretty fair mathematicians and scientists in my mind. Would you have been able to do that? They probably all were tops in the classes in trig and geometry.
When you look at the stars at night they are not exactly where you see them. All light rays entering earth are bent by our atmosphere and thus the image you see is not where you “see” it but slightly off to one side or the other.
Wars have always produced controversy and discord within the warring nations and often the soldiers don’t understand or support the conflict they have been ordered to endure. Iraq, Viet Nam and even back to the Greeks and Romans there were disagreements about how or even whether to proceed. There is a letter from a British officer in Boston in 1775 that complains that no one back home understands there plight being trapped in Boston by the Washington and the revolutionaries. He says they are short of food and other supplies and the actions of the British army at Lexington were cruel. He even asserted that if the men had any way out they would desert and leave the Generals alone. Of course the Generals and the Admirals were also constantly sniping at each other blaming one another for not being aggressive enough with the rebels.
Imagine that very prominent Democrats and Republicans including many who were governors or top government officials, the military chief of staff, the head of the DNC, the directors of the FBI and CIA were all put on public trial and executed over a two year period for crimes against the people. This is what the friend of the hard left and the NYT, Joe Stalin did in 1937 and 1938 to literally dozens of his Communists brethren. No one knows for sure how many lessor lights were also tried and executed or sent to Siberia. The prominent ones were in the scores. The trials were public and all the accused to a man confessed in open court to their alleged crimes and then were promptly killed. One can only guess why they confessed since they knew they were dead men anyway. Threats to family is believed the most likely cause; they confessed in an effort to save their families additional suffering but even that was not always successful as many family members were taken and sent to the Gulag anyway. Then the process was done all over again after WWII in the early ’50’s by Uncle Joe. Can you believe some of the Russians are trying to revive admiration for Stalin? Romney is correct, they still aren’t our pals.
BO is wrong about his definition of judicial activism. That is when the Supreme Court or any other court finds a new right in the Constitution that doesn’t exist of rules in a way that goes against the plain language of the Constitution. The classic example is Roe v. Wade. Regardless of the merits of abortion rights that is not the issue. The problem is that the Court found a right of privacy in the penumbra of the Constitution whatever the hell that means. As a lawyer and citizen that just makes no sense and I resent the Court making up law. Interpreting law is fine but they should create it. They also shouldn’t find that a farmer growing his own crops on his own land for his own consumption is engage in “interstate” commerce.
“I desire what is good; therefore, every one who does not agree with me is a traitor” Barak Obama,,,,,oops,,,,it was King George. www.olcranky.wordpress.com
A Sage for the Ages 