dianamania

Diana Spencer, better known as Princess Diana (which was never an actual title), died twenty years ago today. I was almost twelve at the time and remember the event and the wall-to-wall television coverage but not much else.

I have a feeling Dianamania is generational-dependent. If you're older than me, you probably remember the whole royal marriage soap opera, of which I have only the vaguest and scantest of memories.

With that said, I have never gotten the whole Diana worship thing. Some of it may be my age, but then again I've never been gaga about any celebrity.

Diana did good works, that goes without question. Nonetheless, she was essentially famous for being famous. She married somebody famous who serves no other essential function except to wait for his figurehead mother to die.

Had it not been for her marriage, Diana would have been "who?" So I guess that's the root of why I can't get too excited about her -- she didn't make a name for herself because of her art or scholarship or her own achievements.
She did good works because she was famous, but her fame was a construct. She was, in a way, a precursor for today's reality TV "stars," another collection of people famous simply for being famous.

IMHO fame should result from achievement. And marrying a famous figurehead-in-waiting is not, at the end of a day, any real achievement.

sudden death

We have a neighbor who is a widow in his late forties with teenage children. Sometime after we moved into the area, we learned he had a twin brother who visited from Melbourne about once a month.

I was shocked to learn yesterday that the Melbourne brother was suddenly killed last week in a freak household accident. Understandably, our neighbor is devastated and has gone down to Melbourne with his children to be with his brother's widow and family.

We knew the Melbourne brother well enough to say "hello" when we spotted him around, and he also knew us by name, but we were not close. Nonetheless, it was shocking to discover he had died so suddenly and unexpectedly and only a few days after his last visit.

I guess this is very much a first-world problem. Everyone is generally healthy so usually only old people die. When someone suddenly passes who isn't old, it upends our quiet tranquility.

My husband is somewhat older than I am, and he made a very wise observation that went something like this: "as you age, even if you're not yet old, you'll find unexpected death becomes less of a surprise because it becomes less uncommon."

telepathy is bogus

The husband and I were talking about nothing in particular last night and, somehow, the topic wandered into telepathy. And I suddenly declared "telepathy is so obviously fake."

Scientists and medical people have dissected brains and applied modern analytical skills for decades. They slice and dice and study gray matter in an infinite number of ways.

In order for telepathy to work, there would have to be some kind of physiological transmitter and receiver. But there is none. Absolutely nothing.

You need a radio to receive signals. You need a transmitter to broadcast. For that same reason, in order for me to read your brain waves, I need a receiver and you need a transmitter.

I searched via Google to see if any actual serious scientific tests were conducted recently. I found this but I remain highly skeptical, and I see from reading the public comments that I'm not alone.

For a test like this to be valid, IMHO, you need completely unwitting subjects who have no idea what's being tested. They have no preconceptions about telepathy. Maybe they have never even heard of it.

Considering the variety of horrible medical conditions that still plague humankind, I wish these scientists and medical people searching for telepathic legitimacy focused instead on solving real problems. Why not research a treatment or cure for something like cancer or Alzheimer's?

So if I'm wrong about this, if telepathy is genuine, please send me a psychic message to my private brainwave frequency, and I'll correct my entry.

beating my laptop

A few days ago my laptop keyboard started glitching out. The help window kept popping open or the directory opened or the run screen opened or something else I didn't want.

I thought at first the escape key was sticking but that wasn't the case. So I did some online research and it seemed like the "sticky keys" feature keeps turning on, even though I already had the laptop set to prevent that from ever happening.

This problem does not seem to be weather dependent, but it does seem to happen when I do a lot of very fast, frenetic typing, typically when I'm writing something extemporaneously, like when I write an entry for this blog. I am a fast typist, but when I'm thinking in print like this, I type really fast and, apparently, rather violently.

I finally figured out that when I'm on one of my typing beatdowns, the keyboard somehow goes into a mode as if the control key is always held down. So it's not the same as "sticky keys" but causes a similar result.

My husband is very hard on desktops because he types much more violently than I do. Fortunately, with a desktop, you can easily and cheaply replace the keyboard, which is not the case with laptops.

I love this laptop. I don't want to give it up until I absolutely have to, so I've been trying to train myself that when I type really fast, I don't beat the daylights out of the thing any more.

All in all, I guess it's better I beat a laptop than my husband or children or dog.

the worst problem on earth

The Atlantic magazine recently published a compelling article about the nightmare that is North Korea. The piece was written by Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down, among other books, widely seen as authoritative on defense and military topics.

Bowden makes the cast that four options for dealing with North Korea exist, and all four are equally bad.

The first he calls "prevention," a full-tilt, all-out obliteration of North Korea's military core. "A crushing U.S. military strike to eliminate Pyongyang’s arsenals of mass destruction, take out its leadership, and destroy its military" is how he describes it.

The other three options are less draconian.

That left me wondering if the United States and/or Britain could try a less severe option than wholesale annihilation. Would it be possible to take out or capture North Korea's dictator Kim Jong Un surgically like was done with Osama bin Laden but leave the rest of the leadership intact to implode later?

I would certainly imagine the CIA, the US military, and others have investigated this possibility. Problems with North Korea always seem to have been caused by Kim, his dictator father, and his dictator grandfather, the only three leaders the country has ever had.

I don't think the obnoxious buffoon currently occupying the Oval Office has any real clue how to deal with North Korea and could easily end up making problems worse. Hopefully, smarter and calmer folks in the Pentagon will develop actual solutions.

bestseller shenanigans

Entertainment Weekly has up an interesting article about how an author may have tried to manipulate the process for the The New York Times bestseller list.

The crux of the problem is this: apparently anyone can call a bookstore in New York to (1) inquire if they're one of the stores used for the bestseller list and, if so, (2) bulk order a particular book.

If this is indeed true, then it's amazing no one ever tried to rig the bestseller list before -- or maybe it's regularly done and no one has ever published an exposé about this.

It's not difficult to see some quick solutions to this problem. First, absolutely prohibit any bookstore from disclosing it's used to calculate the bestseller list -- if you reveal, you're out of the process. Second, don't include bulk sales of books in bestseller calculations.

I vaguely remember reading about some famous, affluent writer in the 1950s or 1960s who bulk-bought his own book all over Manhattan in hopes that he was hitting some stores used to calculate the bestseller list. The trick worked but apparently back then, bookstores didn't disclose if they were part of bestseller calculations.

Being on the bestseller list isn't just about vanity. It's an enormous driver of both sales and media exposure for a book.

In the past, the US Justice Department investigated various pay-to-play shenanigans involving music "top forty" lists. I'm obviously not a lawyer, but wouldn't buying your own books to manipulate bestseller lists be a form of unfair competition and market fixing?

deadly microbes

If you want to scare the hell out of yourself, read this article about a microbiologist attempting to find antibiotics for deadly drug-resistant bacteria.

While his study was underway, his own young daughter had a serious, drug-resistant infection on her leg that she developed after being scratced during play in the country.

The article notes that at least 700,000 people around the world die each year from antibiotic-resistant infections. By the year 2050, ten million could succumb annually.

And these are not exotic infections picked up in unusual places. In recent years, drug-resistant bacteria have regularly been found in medical facility common areas and schools after people were infected.

It's enough to keep any parent up nights dreading what could happen.

What I particularly liked about this article was how, after reading it, for the first time I truly understand how antibiotics work and why some will stop one type of infection but not another.

packaging hate

In the last few days, I happened to read this article about a black Latina reporter who interviewed a Klu Klux Klan leader and also listened to this podcast where a former white supremacist was interviewed about his past and his racist family (podcast transcript).

I am lily white and a WASP. My ancestry is entirely Western European -- mostly from the British Isles with a bit of Germanic mixed in.

As a lily-white WASP, I don't believe I am inherently superior because of my race or ethnicity. Character and personality make the person, not his or her race or ethnicity or religion or whatever.

You cannot choose your race nor ethnicity. You can change your religion but not the fact that you were born into a family of a particular religion. But none of this matters anyway.

I truly do not understand people who think that somehow white people from a Western European heritage are superior. White people aren't immune from disease or birth defects. In the history of humankind, white people didn't discover all the important inventions. White people have created many problems on this planet.

Yes, for a long time, white Europeans had military superiority, but that was thanks to gunpowder, not race. Yet white people didn't even invent gunpowder -- Marco Polo brought that back from China, where it was discovered by non-white people.

As the podcast interview reinforces, racism seems to be learned while growing up. If your parents were racists, you'll probably start out as a racist. If they're not racists, you probably won't turn out to be one, either.

I will say this -- and I agree it's probably racist -- why is it that white supremacists always seem to look like white trash? If these people want to peddle the idea that they're somehow superior, shouldn't they start with themselves?

If they were all in fantastic physical condition and with impressive scientific and artistic credentials, then maybe they could try to make a convincing case.

But when you're sitting on the cinder-block steps of your double-wide, nursing a beer and scratching your paunch, while laughing and showing your missing teeth, you're not making a very convincing case for white supremacy.

in a dark, dark wood

Last night I finished British novelist Ruth Ware's first book, In a Dark, Dark Wood, published in 2015. She's written two novels since then, the latest published this year, and all three of her books hit the bestseller lists.

Her work had been discussed on several book forums I frequent, and although I wasn't familiar with her, I decided to check her out. I'm certainly glad I did and now have her second book on order at our local library.

In a Dark, Dark Wood is part mystery, part thriller, and is very tightly written for a first novel. The plot is somewhat complex, and the author manages to keep all the balls in their air without dropping any.

For almost all of the book, you're not sure if you're dealing with an unreliable narrator, which makes it all the more of a page turner. I love stories with unreliable narrators as well as those where you're uncertain if you're dealing with one or not.

I found only one sort-of plot hole the author didn't miss but didn't quite plug effectively, either. It actually had a easier fix that I believe the writer set up and did not really use, but she obviously didn't think of that or didn't want to go there.

The book is not long, so if you like tightly paced, edgy thrillers from a woman's perspective coupled with an intriguing mystery that's not quite like anything you've seen before, you might enjoy In a Dark, Dark Wood. It's a very fun and enjoyable read.

necklace tattoo

Nothing quite says white trash douchebag like a necklace and pendant tattoo.

What is the moronic thinking behind this? Why get a tattoo when you can just wear a chain around your neck? If you wear the real thing, you can go for some variety with different chains on different days.

Not only is this tattoo stupid, if you wear an open-neck shirt, you'll advertise you're a dunce because everyone will see it. And forget ever having this thing removed without a lot of expense and visible scarring.

I have a suspicion that many men who get something like this quickly realize it was a mistake. Why do I say that?

Because most examples I found online with Google search were all very new, as evidenced by the reddened skin around the tattoo.

Men who've had these long enough to heal don't seem to be so inclined to show them off.

mystical sexual counseling

I was listening to a podcast over the weekend that included a segment on Ida Craddock who was prosecuted successfully for obscenity several times in the very early twentieth century for sending sex manuals and sex advice through the mails.

Now while she sounds like something of a crank -- she claimed to have wild sex with a ghost -- the idea that someone could be prosecuted and imprisoned for dispensing sex advice is heartbreaking. Craddock was so hounded by one censor that she committed suicide on the eve of a five-year prison sentence; he then publicly bragged about what he had hounded her to do.

What I found particularly horrifying was this: her longest sentence was for mailing a sex manual that was considered too obscene for the jury to even see. How could you convict someone of obscenity without seeing the actual evidence?

I have never been able to understand why Victorians were so terrified of sex.

erasing history

Before the controversy erupted last week over a confederate statue in Charlottesville, Virginia, I've avoided that topic of discussion here. I did write on issues somewhat tangential twice in the past: about a white supremacy monument and a controversy at Harvard over a school crest.

But I think I'll write about the issue today. Now I realize, of course, that absolutely nobody has been waiting with baited breath for me to speak on this topic, but the whole point of blogging is to write whatever you want.

So here's what I think: I have not yet seen a compelling argument for keeping most confederate memorial statues on prominent display in public parks and thoroughfares. However, I have seen compelling arguments for removing them.

One argument I see in favor of keeping them where they are is "they're part of our heritage." It seems to be a lot of people who use that argument don't understand the meaning of heritage.

If you live in a particular city, unless you were born and raised there, and spend your adult life there, that city isn't part of your heritage. And even if you lived all your life in that city, if your ancestors didn't fight for the confederacy, it isnt really part of your heritage, either.

My dictionary defines heritage as "a tradition of honor, pride, and courage." So that infers you have to accept something for it to be part of your heritage. If you don't honor the confederate side, if you don't have any pride in it, then it's not part of your heritage even if you had ancestors who fought for the South in the Civil War.

So, really, such statues are "part of the heritage" for only a fairly small percentage of the population in a city. And how is a statue part of heritage anyway, unless your ancestors were literally responsible for funding or installing it in the first place?

Another argument I've seen is that "you're trying to erase history" by removing the statues. That, of course, is ludicrous.

Statues in and of themselves don't record history. Many of the statues in question were actually installed long after the Civil War was over -- particularly in the 1920s, in the height of the Jim Crow era.

The statues themselves tell no real story. They're bronze men on bronze horses covered with patina and pigeon shit. If you take away the statue, the history still exists. You can learn about history without ever setting eyes on a statue.

I think a common-sense, middle-ground solution can be found for these monuments. Remove them from their place of prominence in cities and relocate them to the grounds of history museums and historical societies. That way they can still be seen as historical artifacts without all the public glorification.

Arguably the best closing words on this topic come from Robert E. Lee himself. When discouraging monuments he said it was wiser "not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered."

an australian political scandal

While Washington is roiling in scandals oozing out of the Oval Office, down under here in Australia the government is gripped by its own home-grown crisis.

At the heart of the mess is a 1901 law that requires members of the Australian Parliament must only be citizens of Australia alone.

So if you have dual citizenship, you cannot serve, many legal experts say. That has thrown a cloud over the eligibility of seven current members.

The whole issue is currently before the High Court, Australia's version of the Supreme Court. They will begin hearings on the matter next week. They could rule in favor of Australian-only citizenship, which would mean the seven affected members would have to resign immediately.

If this happens, the balance of power between the major parties in Parliament would change. It could cause the government to fall, as happens in parliamentary systems, thus requiring a new election.

What I think is grossly stupid about all of this scandal is this: most of the seven involved may have dual citizenship simply because a parent or parents were born outside Australia. Yet they never actively pursued that second citizenship, never visited that country, never obtained a passport, never exploited their rights, and so forth.

In one case, when the politician was a small child, a parent applied for foreign citizenship in the child's name but never revealed that had been done. The politician didn't even know about the dual citizenship until recently.

To take a real-world example, my husband is an Australian citizen and I am an American citizen. That means, as a matter of law, our sons have dual citizenship: Australia and the United States.

If this law is allowed to stand, they could not serve in parliament even if they never visited the States, never applied for an American passport, etc. They would have to consciously renounce their American citizenship.

Whatever the High Court rules, when the dust settles, Parliament should amend the law to allow dual citizenship. This is a nation of immigrants and it's a silly requirement.

calculating baby three

The Husband and I sat down the other night to calcuate when would be the ideal time for Baby Three, our final planned child, to appear on the scene. Our conclusion was that sometime in the middle of 2019 would be best.

I would really prefer not to have two children in diapers at the same time. Joey was a few months past three years old when his baby brother arrived and beyond the diaper stage.

Based on our past history, it could take as long as a year for me to get pregnant again. So adding nine months to twelve months, if we started screwing without birth control now, I conceivably would deliver sometime in earlier 2019.

The possible fly in this ointment would be if I end up getting pregnant in much sooner than a year. Just because it took a while before doesn't necessarily mean it would take as long now, right?

That seems like a logical conclusion, but I wonder if it really is. We fucked, almost without exception, at least daily when we were trying to conceive Joey. We probably fucked twice a day more often than once a day, and three times a day was not unknown.

Things were not quite as intense with Tombo, because by then we knew we could get pregnant with time. But we still ended up shagging nearly every day and, less often, twice a day.

All in all, we concluded that ending up pregnant sooner than we want is better than later than we want. So the condoms are back in the drawer for now and staying there.

Whatever the answer, I think this qualifies as a first world problem.

the commoner

Last night I finished a novel called The Commoner by American writer John Burnham Schwartz. The story is a fictional imagining of the current Empress of Japan, who made history as the first commoner to marry into the millenia-old Japanese royal family.

Schwartz is arguably best known for the novel Reservation Road, which was adapted into the acclaimed film. He also wrote the screenplay for that.

The empress novel is very interesting and I was thinking about it a lot today. While the book is not without flaws -- I think it's close to impossible for a heterosexual man to write something from the intimate perspective of a woman -- at the same time it's a particularly distinct and memorable work.

The book makes pretty clear the emperor, unlike the British monarch, has pretty much no constitutional powers. He's an expensive living symbol and figurehead.

A quick read online revealed the Japanese people by a pretty large majority want to keep the emperor and the royal family, so they're probably not going anywhere.

The central figure in Schwartz's novel is the commoner empress and an important secondary character is her daughter-in-law, who is also a commoner and married to the heir apparent. Both women were progressive for their respective eras and thus rather liberated, and becoming part of the royal family absolutely muzzles and smothers them, making them worse than miserable.

One character ultimately rebels openly while the other discretely helps the rebel. While that's the emotional zenith of the novel, it's also the part that's arguably the least developed.

I would like to see a skilled female novelist take on the same topic, one who isn't so interested in all the pagentry of the royal family and instead writes the women from the inside out.

I'd recommend the book but with some cavaets. I don't think it's "chick lit," but women will arguably get more out of it than men.

peek-a-boo girls

The picture below (enlargement) is a circa Summer 1919 view of some "Peek-a-Boo Girls" on Revere Beach outside Boston. In an era when many or most women still wore bathing costumes that looked more like a long-sleeved, knee-length (if not longer) dress, various beaches up and down the East Coast would feature more minimally clad young ladies to attract visitors.

I looked online but couldn't find anything about the women themselves who did this. Were they "fast" girls, like the strippers and porn actresses of later eras? Was their pay lousy or great?

I could see myself as a Peek-a-Boo Girl. A beach would be a good place to meet men because you'd learn more about them than you would on a street. A partially dressed man presents himself differently than one who is dressed, and beachwear allows a girl to see what a dude is packing.

I remember seeing a picture that my grandfather had of his father and friends taken at a beach shortly before America entered World War I. My great-grandfather was in his mid-twenties then, and nicely built, which you could see in his bathing suit -- a tanktop-like item combined with snug boxer brief-like shorts.

I could also see quite clearly that Great-Grandpa was well above average in his endowment. He didn't have a woody, but he clearly had a sleeping giant.

Is it weird to lust after pictures of ancestors when they were young?

look again

I saw this picture on a fashion forum and immediately thought, "ooh, I want stockings like that." But the dark color was a little much for my taste and thought they'd look better on me in light pink or pale lavender. I wondered if they came in other shades.

And then I looked closer. That's disposable surgical toweling she's lying on. That's some kind of procedure table under her. Towels and a table like that are something you'd find in a doctor's office.

Or a tattoo parlor. Then I realized my mistake. Those are not stockings she can take off when she's tired of that look, or they clash with her outfit, or they go out of style.

Those are forever. When she's old and saggy and riddled with varicose veins, she'll still be wearing those "stockings."

But, hey, they'll never get a run, so there's that.

iron curtain orgasms

The New York Times published an interesting piece over the weekend about how, during the Cold War era, women behind the Iron Curtain had twice as many orgasms as Western women.

The writer linked the revelation to the fact that women in socialist countries were generally more liberated by society than in the West. While that is true, I think she's missing some important other factors.

Men in Western Europe could enjoy porn movies, strip joints, sex clubs, and houses of prostitution, the latter which were either legal or openly tolerated. In the East, none of that was allowed, plus there wasn't that much to be spent even if there was.

So if Nikita or Sasha needed to get his rocks off, there were few outlets: his right hand or an actual woman. As a result, he needed to pay attention to his wife or girlfriend's needs.

I've written here before about the crazy former boyfriend who ended up stalking me after we broke up. He was Russian and raised in the Soviet Union. He mentioned several timers about how, during the dark days of the Cold War, sex was really the only release many people had.

They humped as much as they could to forget about Big Brother, even if only momentarily.

gene editing success

Early last week, the news broke that scientists had, for the first time, successfully edited out a deadly mutation from human embryos. That means, sometime in the near future, parents who could pass on a fatal mutation would no longer suffer the heartbreak of a child with a killing condition.

Except that won't happen in the United States, where such a procedure would be illegal.

I can see prohibiting selective gene editing so parents couldn't select a perfect child with the potential to be both a genius and Olympic medalist.

But prohibiting gene editing that could eliminate conditions like cystic fibrosis? Sorry, that's just incredibly narrow-minded and cruel.

And don't even start on that playing God nonsense. If a supreme being didn't want scientists to have this power, people wouldn't be given the brains to develop such breakthroughs.

Tightly regulate it, strictly supervise it, prosecute those who use it for anything other than eliminating birth defects. But don't throw out the proverbial baby with the bath water.

should we be scared?

With all the unhinged rhetoric flying between Washington and Pyongyang this past week, I've started thinking that the unthinkable could actually happen. We're 3,300 miles from Guam, so I started worrying about nuclear fallout that might drift in the atmosphere and rain down here.

Some quick Google research shows that's pretty close to impossible for a variety of reasons. Articles like this help me feel better, too.

I also have to think Guam is protected by some kind of anti-ballistic missile system. So that any first strike attempt on the island would be thwarted, but what occurs after that could be very worrisome.

I heard an interesting radio interview yesterday about how the United States and North Korea were close to an agreement in 1999 where the latter would suspend all nuclear activity and allow monitoring thereafter. However, the new American administration in 2001 scuttled that and returned to a hard-line approach of ignoring diplomacy, setting us on the road we're on today.

Bluster and belligerence from the current Oval Office occupant is making matters much worse. Kim Jong-un is a madman, and deliberately antagonizing him is simply pouring more gasoline on the fire.

Cooler heads need to prevail, but that does not seem currently possible when two irrational hot-heads are in charge.

the digital umbilicus

The September issue of The Atlantic -- which may not yet be on newsstands but is available online -- has a fascinating article called "Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?" It has the subtitle deck "More comfortable online than out partying, post-Millennials are safer, physically, than adolescents have ever been. But they’re on the brink of a mental-health crisis."

As a millennial, I don't have too much contact with post-millennials so I'm not really tuned into their world. Some of them I see out and about seem to be smartphone-centered while others are not.

Our oldest son is still too young to really be focused much on electronics, but we consciously limit his exposure. While some other children his age have electronic devices and games, he does not.

Neither my husband nor I have smartphones (we just have the cheaper, older pay-as-you-go "dumb" mobile models) and we don't plan on upgrading. When the boys are older, we don't plan on getting smartphones; they'll get "dumb" ones for emergencies only.

James and I both feel the same way about electronic technology -- it's an excellent and valuable tool but access should be limited for children. Just like we would never allow our kids to watch unlimited television, we feel the same way about electronics.

James spent very little of his youth watching television. I probably spent more of mine early on, but I weaned myself off on my own, finding reading more interesting and then, when I was older, boys captured my attention.

I sometimes see pre-teens and even younger children out and about, and they're glued to smartphones. I'm curious why parents don't instinctively see that as a problem.

Other kids their age, particularly neighbors, that I see are riding bicycles and skateboards and playing football in a vacant lot. I guess all the neighbor children who I don't see are inside on smartphones.

Most parents probably wouldn't want their children watching television constantly, carrying around a portable set with their face glued to it 24/7. So why don't they see the same inherent problems with smartphones?

reality TV hell

I was skimming the entertainment news and saw a headline about the latest season finale of the American reality TV show The Bachelorette.

I spontaneously said aloud to my husband nearby, "Hell is a solitary-confinement cell where you're forced to watch an endless loop of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette reruns 24/7 until the end of time."

I guess for variety, inmates would also be forced to watch the Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand versions.

I had a good laugh when I read that only three of the twenty-one "winning" couples from all the past seasons of The Bachelor were still together. That track record is worse than the population at large. The Bachelorette has a somewhat better track record with slightly less than half of the couples still together, although most of them were from recent seasons and have not yet had time to sour on each other.

My interest in watching any of these shows is less than zero. It would be like listening in on phone conversations between people I didn't even know.

the national shame

I was listening to an episode of the excellent free podcast Backstory yesterday, a program focusing on lesser-known and little-known incidents, events, and trends in American history.

This particular installment was about the history of terrorism in the United States, and part of the show focused on the hideous heritage of lynching.

To the best of my recollection, I was not taught one single thing about lynching when I was in school. I only completed the ninth grade, but tenth through twelfth grades did not study American history, so I didn't miss anything on that subject.

There was some history when I studied for and took the GED, but again nothing about lynching. In middle school, I do recall learning some about the Holocaust and we read Anne Frank's diary.

In the last ten years or so, I've read a lot of books and articles about America's three-century journey to today, and lynching is typically touched on when the subject is the nineteenth or twentieth century, but only tangentially.

I think the history of lynching needs to be more in Americans' consciousness. PBS needs to do a multi-part series on this. There needs to be a National Day of Remembrance (not a holiday).

Part of what made lynching so horrible was how the entire system of government largely looked the other way when it happened -- nationally, state, and locally. Photographs were taken of lynchings with many faces clearly visible, and some of those were even reproduced as postcards, but time and time again, the authorities said "no one could be identified."

I'm white so I have no personal investment in this issue (although a few lynching victims were white). Hopefully none of my ancestors ever participated in a lynching. If I feel angry and disgusted and ashamed of lynching, I can only imagine how the descendants of its victims must feel. Some of their children are still alive.

Just as the Holocaust must never be forgotten, the same must be said about the disgraceful history of lynching in America. Nearly 5,000 known lynchings occurred and possibly quite a few more that were never properly reported as such.

Those people should not be victimized a second time by systematic and social amnesia.

If you want to learn more about lynching, you might start on this webpage and this webpage. I thought long and hard about using a lynching photograph to illustrate this entry, but decided against it; however, if you search online, lots of historical pictures can be found.

meanwhile, in california

Virtual reality may be wonderful, but this strikes me as a really bad, unsafe idea. It's the equivalent of wearing a blindfold in public.

Not only are you vulnerable to crime, you're a sitting target for any smartass who wants to prank you. When I was a teenager, I knew boys who could not resist this kind of temptation, even if they did something relatively mild, like "accidentally" spilling a cold drink on him.

I also think it would be disorienting. You're lost in some virtual reality world, and suddenly you have to tear off the goggles to deal with a real-world problem.

And forget being a responsible parent while wearing this. Not to mention a woman with a purse.

But then again, I don't think too many mothers with handbags and small children would be tempted to use one of these when out with them in public. Of course, I once again could be woefully underestimating human idiocy.

the iPod era ends

I read over the weekend that Apple is discontinuing all but one iPod model. The old models will still be available through retailers, but only until the existing supply is exhausted.

I have owned multiple iPods in my life and still use my two Nanos daily. Now I'm thinking about buying a few more to keep in case my existing ones die.

Apple is expecting everyone to use smartphones, except I don't use a smartphone and neither does the husband. We both have mobiles but refuse to pay the extra costs associated with an iPhone.

I hate when companies do away with a product I like. It's understandable if they have a better upgrade available, but in this case there is none. They just want you to buy something much more expensive.

Total bummer. Yet another reason to hate on Apple.

completely contradictory

If you're even a casual reader of this blog, you probably know I think tattoos are a major mistake. I would never get one, and I hope my sons never get them, either.

My husband has two tattoos he obtained when he was in his early twenties, long before he met me, and he now firmly believes they were a mistake. Both are significantly faded so they're not really noticeable, but he'll never get any more.

With all that said, I confess I think the guy seen below is very sexy. He makes my lady parts twitter. Part of the reason, I realize, are the inked sleeves.

I have always had a thing for men with big, powerful arms. Not bodybuilder, Popeye big, but strong and muscular. My husband has arms like that, and so does Mister Inky below.

So maybe it's his arms I'm responding to and not the tattoos. The ink just emphasizes his muscles, and that wraps up the whole package with the athletic build, hair, black clothes, etc.

Nevertheless, I think it's a major mistake he got that ink all over his arms. He can never undo that. That's far too extreme for laser removal.

He will live with that decision the rest of his life. If he gets fat or flabby or skinny because of some illness, they probably will look ridiculous.

The guy is a musician/model so I easily found more of his pictures online. He has a lot more tattoos than just the ones on his arms -- most of his chest, torso, and legs are covered, too, and they're just way too much.

My husband would probably look even sexier, at least to me, if he got ink sleeves. At least at this point in his life. But he'd probably look like a worn out old carny in his elderly years.

And we both agree he'll never, ever get them.

the whole world is laughing

Sorry, this is a political post. I can't help it. I will not mention you-know-who by name but you know who I'm talking about.

The media here down under has been having a field day since transcripts were leaked of a phone conversation between the US President and the Australian Prime Minister. The PM has taken a lot of heat over some things he said during that call, but the American President is looking a lot worse and nothing short of a complete laughingstock.

We warned you about this, America, we people who didn't vote for That Man. We said the rest of the world would be laughing at the United States if he was elected him and that international relations would worsen. We worried America's image would slip like the last time the US had a deeply unpopular President.

I hate to say "we told you so," but we told you so. What we warned you about is coming true.

Now some Americans don't care. They don't like none of them foreigners. But the world is a neighborhood and you need to have decent relations with your neighbors.

When the whole neighborhood is laughing at you, you lose respect. When you lose respect, you lose clout. When you lose clout, you lose power.

As one diplomat said: "He’s the opposite of Teddy Roosevelt. He speaks loudly and carries a small stick."

When you lose power, your companies can't compete internationally as well as they can when you're well respected. When the neighbors all think your head-of-household is an ignorant, crass buffoon, they spend all their time laughing at you, making it harder to achieve your goals in the neighborhood.

Wake up and impeach him, sooner rather than later. Any of the designated replacements waiting in the wings will be better -- the Vice-President or, if he's lost in an impeachment tidal wave, the Speaker of the House.

The magazine cover seen below is how the world now views your President. This is a real cover and not Photoshopped.

am I a philistine?

The New York Times is running a laudatory article about a Manhattan-based artist currently working on two massive 27 feet by 32 feet paintings for a museum in San Francisco.

The female artist is undoubtedly famous and her paintings sell for millions of dollars. Art is economics perfected -- supply meets demand.

You can see one of her paintings below (enlargement).

With that said, I always wonder with art like this -- do people say they like it and think it's brilliant because other people say it's fantastic? Do people pay millions because they fell in love with it or because it is just a status symbol?

At the risk of sounding like a Philistine, I was left indifferent to the artist's work. The paintings are certainly active and busy, but so is some wallpaper.

If I had several million to spend on art, I would not be buying this. I think I'd buy something by Frederic Edwin Church that I could stare at every day for the rest of my life.

Art is subjective. You like this; I like that. So I guess if I like some art and don't mock you for what you like and buy, then maybe I'm not a Philistine.

presidential hottie

In February, I wrote a blog post about how I thought that Theodore Roosevelt was kinda hot when he was a young man. I also mentioned I should read a biography about him.

Flash forward six months, and I'm currently making my way through Edmund Morris's Pulitzer Prize-winning and massively long three-volume Roosevelt biography. The book is quite interesting and well written, but so lengthy, I plan to break it up with intermissions to read other books.

Morris mentions TR's looks quite a few times. He makes it pretty clear he thinks Roosevelt was an unattractive young man.

I found a picture of a younger Morris online, and sorry I have to say this, Edmund, but you were no Adonis. You shouldn't be dissing Theodore's looks.

Young Roosevelt at age eighteen, seen below, may not have been the handsomest young man ever, but he's certainly better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. A date with him, however, sounds like it was a totally G-rated event because he resolutely saved himself for marriage.

When the Roosevelt book came into the library for me, a sweet old lady checked it out and asked "isn't he the one who invented the teddy bear?"

I think Teedee (as he was called by friends and family but never Teddy) did a few rotations in his grave in response.

read the user manual

I am probably like many people: I never read the user manual when I buy new hardware or software. I just load or install it and then try to figure out how to use it by trial and error.

I guess my thinking is it's better to figure things out on your own than to try and memorize what you encounter in the user manual before actually using it.

Yesterday I discovered that it might be a good idea to read the documentation at some point to improve my usage of the product.

I bought my latest laptop more than five years ago and use it daily. I prefer a cordless mouse so I never use the touchpad.

But with the touchpad right below the keyboard, my thumb or lower part of my hand will invariably rub up against it several times a day, causing the pointer to fly where I don't want it on the screen.

If only I could turn off the touchpad somehow, I always mused.

And then yesterday I somehow accidentally turned off the touchpad. Hooray!

Until I brought it back up from idle for the first time and discovered the "touchpad off" function only lasts as long as the active session.

So at that point, I was determined to find out how to turn it off again. To start, it took me a while to figure out which was the correct user manual on my system for the answer.

Finally, I found the answer and fixed it. Hooray! No more flying thumbs.

I'm going to try to make a point now to read user manuals within three months of first installing or loading a product. But first, I should probably review all the user manuals I already have for the products I own.

sam shepard RIP

The great Sam Shepard has died, his family announced yesterday. He had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which was not publicly revealed before his death.

IMHO he had a wildly uneven career, both as an actor and a playwright, but when he was in his top form, he was absolutely superb. He could be forgiven for his misses because his hits were phenomenal.

I once saw Shepard walking on a New York street with an unknown male friend when I was walking the opposite way with a female acquaintance.

Shepard smiled at us when we passed, and we smiled back, and then after he proceeded behind us, I saw in a window's reflecting glass that he and his friend had turned to watch our asses.

I never asked and will never know whether it was me or my acquaintance or both who attracted his attention.

But it was nice to know at least one of us had brightened the great man's day.