I’m reading, The Day the War Ended, by Martin Gilbert. It’s a bunch of personal accounts of the days leading up to, and after, V-E day. It’s filling in some blanks in my knowledge of those days, though there’s a lot of repetition (and sometimes the details are too narrow to be interesting to me. […]
Archive | Humanity
Unconditional Love
It’s been said several million times that children love their parents unconditionally. When my daughter is upset by something, and crying, she often wants me to pick her up and hold her for a while. This is true even when *I’m the one who pissed her off.* If I force her to get dressed before […]
Downtime
First, I guess, people figured out that they don’t have to spend all day gathering plants to eat. They can bring the seeds home, then plant stuff nearby. That”ll save time. But then, they really didn’t need everyone to help gather the food anymore. It was all nearby. Still took a lot of work, but […]
People Are Stupid and I Love Them
Apparently, fear of swine flu is driving the price of pork products down down down. This is true even though the flu can’t be spread by eating pork. Since I love pork chops, pulled pork, ham, and all the rest, this news is just fine with me.
Flu, 2009-style
Not long ago, I posted about the 1918 flu pandemic. Whole cities enacted laws about wearing surgical masks. Schools and courts shut down. Large areas of daily life changed radically. Some interesting facts: 1. It seemed to strike the young and healthy (that is, not just really old and really young people). 2. It seemed […]
The Next Generation
When I was a kid, the powers that be were always drilling us with anti-smoking and anti-pollution. The idea being that our parents were lost, but the next generation could be trained to be better, healthier citizens. [The commercial with the Crying Indian (or, crying Italian-American guy pretending to be Indian) apparently came out somewhere […]
The Art of Rhetoric
I recently read a book that said that when you argue with your children, you should argue generously. (“Argue generously” is my rephrasing of what the author said.) That is, you shouldn’t win the argument only because you’re more articulate, or louder, or know how to spin words around better than they do. You should […]
The Flu, 1918-style
Sort of recently, I’ve read two accounts of the 1918 flu. The first was a short story that had the flu as a sort of backdrop to the real story. (That was the excellent and sad “L. DeBard and Aliette” by Lauren Groff.) And the second is “Flu : The Story Of The Great Influenza […]
On Being Naked
Do you remember that scene in Blue Velvet, where Isabella Rossellini appears on a front lawn completely naked? Her arms are outstretched like that girl in Vietnam whose village had been bombed by the Vietnamese Air Force? I’m reading The Kindly Ones, by Anthony Powell. It has nothing like the emotional intensity of Blue Velvet […]
This is Not Nice
Cop beats the crap out of a 15 year old girl. She did sort of seem to kick her shoe at him a little bit. So obviously she’s dangerous and needs to be beaten. However, after being thrown to the ground (by her hair), she didn’t seem to struggle at all, so the two punches […]