Unraveling Slavery

I’m a history buff, and just tonight through the wonderful Explorator was I able to read the story behind the actual unraveling of slavery that happened during the course of the Civil War.

It wasn’t a result of the war, as many people still believe, but it happened because of the war.  It didn’t happen from the top, but as the result of a horse ride conducted under the white flag of truce.  It all sprang from the conversation between the Union general, who was a wily and skilled lawyer back home in Massachusetts, and the Confederate colonel, who was Southern gentry.  In the end, the general came up with a well accepted wartime rule that worked as well as balancing angels on the head of a pin, so that the peculiar institution which many didn’t want abolished, even in the North, with the many who were uncomfortable with its existence and its abolition equally, and even with the emancipators, could find a way to accept and live with the results.  It wasn’t Fort Sumter, and it wasn’t the Emancipation Proclamation, but it was an in-between incident which should’ve never become a forgotten part of Civil War history.  But if you read it and pass it on, it will not be.

Filed under: fact nugget, tribute

Proof of Nazareth’s Existence in the Time of Christ

“And would you want to see, if seeing meant that you would have to believe.”
- Joan Osbourne, One of Us

So they found a foundation of a house, then they let the archaeologists take over inspection of the site, where they soon found tile, ceramics, and pottery dating the house to pre-Roman conquest times.  Up until now, there were a number who denied the existence of biblical Nazareth, saying that since the town’s evidence began way after Roman times, that there was no town there at the time of Christ.

The more work gets done, the more things get pieced together.

Filed under: fact nugget

Balloon Buster

The first war pilots were a brave and crazy bunch, and had a certain panache with their exploits.  The Red Baron, for instance, painted his plane fire engine red as if waving his arms and screaming “come and get me if you can” when everyone else was into the new camouflage idea.

Then there was the Belgian air ace Willy Coppens.  Popping surveillance balloons was his specialty, when that was the hardest thing to do at the time, and a true trick to pull off.  Now the Germans decided to make a balloon specially for Mr. Coppens himself.  They fitted a balloon with all of the explosives they could get into it.  Of course when you do something like that, someone has to brag, and word gets around.

The Germans were so proud of their little plot that word of the scheme eventually got back to Coppens himself, who decided that after they went to all that expense and effort, it would be rude not to go have a look at this balloon.  When he got there, he discovered that the Germans had really made a day of it, with dozens of soldiers and staff officers standing around to watch the fireworks. The balloon itself was still being winched up and was, crucially, only at half its intended height.  The resulting explosion sent his plane rocking through the sky like a kangaroo on a pogo stick, yet it remained intact. If the low height had saved Coppens, it proved disastrous for those below, with the resulting fireball killing and maiming dozens of the watchers on the ground.

Hahahahaha.  Now c’mon, the whole mental image of this episode of Jackass has to get you laughing, too.  A bunch of rear detachment guys dying of boredom when their brothers were dying of bullets and disease on the front, who had nothing better to do than to stand idly by to watch a crazy Belgian blow himself up with their idea of a joke, getting bettered by him.  The balloon that was designed to blow up everything within 500 feet got 250 feet into the air when the Belgian plane comes over the horizon.  Oh, s***. First you say it, then you do it.  Now who’s the idiot?

Filed under: fact nugget, tribute

Airport Security

A number of bloggers who I read have aired out their complaints about airport security.  There may be a solution, but only for American Ingenuity do we not have it in place.  We seem to think that any and all good ideas originate in the good ole USA, and anything “them foreigners” come up with is innately inferior.

El Al and general Israeli airport security has been able to succeed in getting people shoved through the chute in 30 minutes.  This article features the comments of security consultant Rafi Sela.

“The first thing you do is to look at who is coming into your airport,” said Sela.  The first layer of actual security that greets travellers at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport is a roadside check. All drivers are stopped and asked two questions: How are you? Where are you coming from?

There is the nut in the shell.  The Israelis aren’t worried about what you’re carrying, to a certain reasonable degree, they are focused on you.

Regarding the much simpler hand baggage and personal check, “First, it’s fast — there’s almost no line. That’s because they’re not looking for liquids, they’re not looking at your shoes. They’re not looking for everything they look for in North America. They just look at you,” said Sela. “Even today with the heightened security in North America, they will check your items to death. But they will never look at you, at how you behave. They will never look into your eyes … and that’s how you figure out the bad guys from the good guys.” That’s the process — six layers, four hard, two soft. The goal at Ben-Gurion is to move fliers from the parking lot to the airport lounge in a maximum of 25 minutes.

And that is security at Ben Gurion International Airport.  Israel – four miles between the Arabs and the Mediterranean Sea.  The Jews are a genius people – they might be worth learning from.  Even if they’re not Americans.

Filed under: fact nugget, observations

Arizona Giveaway

So Obama a) ordered a halt to the border wall, then b) declared large chunks of southern Arizona to be no travel zones to Americans due to illegals being there in small, armed paramilitary bands.  Nothing like handing a handful of spite to the state trying its utmost to uphold federal immigration laws.

General Pershing, my apologies to your spirit.  Same to your, General (at the time Lieutenant) Patton.  The last time Mexican nationals came roaming into American border towns killing ranchers and terrorizing towns, you two lit up northern Mexico.

Hat tip Indiana Conservative Hardball.

Filed under: fact nugget, liberal games, no wonder I'm fed up

Obama’s SSN

Call me a birther, call me what you will.  Until you can refute these things, nothing you can say is worth a tinker’s damn:

Filed under: fact nugget

Korea

Whooda thunk that North Korea’s sinking of a South Korean naval vessel wouldn’t be news.  Even the ROK is downplaying it, saying an unexpected hole caused its ship to take on water.  What?

Well, the world wanted us to get a leader that would make them like us so much more.  I miss when we had Bush and Rumsfeld having the world get its hate on, since that hate came from them knowing that these two were batshit crazy as far as their actually attacking those who threaten us and our allies.  But even our allies know not to fight back, that That One would never have their backs.

Well, Free World, you got the guy you cheered for in front of those Styrofoam columns in Nuremberg or wherever.  Don’t say we didn’t listen to you and give you this gift.  You wanted him more than we did, now life with him.  Earth is a pretty cold and dismal place without our support now, isn’t it?  ROK, why don’t you saddle up with Japan and handle North Korea yourselves.  That One is busy fighting Tea Partiers and branding Republicans as Congressman threatening terrorists, and has no time to deal with his communist friend North of you.

Filed under: fact nugget, observations

Prius

This Prius owner has a hammerlock on how to not die in a Prius, or any Toyota with accelerator issues.  When you play this, know that he uses the word f*** like he was in a tryout for the sequel to the Big Lebowski.  This might matter if you’re playing this in church on your iPhone while blowing off the boring sermon going on in front of you.  But he drives along and using his car, in real time, shows how easy it is not to die:

Filed under: common stupidity, fact nugget

Elephant

Here’s a story of an elephant rampage.  It happened one year after a Hindu pogrom against Christians in the Indian state of Orissa.  The elephants came through the towns at the same time of day on the exact days that the pogroms happened, and proceeded to smash the equipment and homes of the Hindus, leaving property of Christians intact.  For no known reason (i.e. food shortage, habitat disturbance in their homeland), they traveled 300 km to go on this amazingly selective rampage.  Apparently, a smaller elephant cases the town on a scouting mission, then reports back to the larger ones, who come in and lay waste.

Strange things happen in this world.

Filed under: fact nugget, religion

Simple Science

Sometimes the most simple of solutions can solve a massive problem.  Running packaged food through coils of low wattage, high voltage electricity causes the air inside to be ionized, and this kills the bacteria.

Filed under: fact nugget