Long Memories Strike Again

According to reports from people closed to Ted Kennedy one of the things that pushed him over the edge into coming out against the Clintons was actually Hilary's comment about Martin Luther King and LBJ. Not for the obvious reasons that everyone else objected but because Ted took it as a devaluation of JFK's role in introducing the bill before his assisination. So undoubtably without meaning to, the Clinton's were taking a side in the feud between the Kennedy's and LBJ. Amazing.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/sleuth/2008/01/post_11.html

Mormon Bumpersticker

Mormonism: The Scientology of the Nineteenth Century.

Why Judaism Is So Popular

I was sitting around with my in-laws comparing Jewish views on the after-life with Christians. They asked me if we had Heaven and also Resurrection. I told them that the Orthodox believed that when the Messiah came that your body would rise up. That was the reason that cremation is an abomination to them. Not only would the body come up, as is, but the Jews would come together in Israel. Orthodox aspire to be buried in Israel, because otherwise they would have to burrow through the Earth to get there.

I had to assure Jeneva that I wasn't making this up. (So I had to find it online in the Jewish Encyclopedia http://jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=233&letter=R " Those that are buried elsewhere will therefore be compelled to creep through cavities in the earth until they reach the Holy Land (Pesiḳ. R. l.c., with reference to Ezek. xxxvii. 13; Ket. 111a).")

So in short, the Jewish view of the after life is a whole bunch of naked old Jews crowded into Israel for all eternity. The Christians have heaven, the Muslims have the virgins for Martyrs and we have Miami nude Beach -- I now see why over the last 2,000 years we have had so much success getting converts -- who wouldn't want to join?

Vietnam Veterans Last Chance

John McCain represents the last chance for a Vietnam Veteran to be elected President. Every other war has had one or more veterans become president. The usual pattern was set with our first President, where the over-all commanding General succeeds to the Presidency, this seems to be especially true for our big wars -- Grant from the Civil War and Eisenhower from WWII. The war of 1812 gave us Andrew Jackson and the First Harrison. The Mexican American war gave us Zachary Taylor and Spanish American War gave us its one hero -- Teddy Roosevelt. WWI gave Truman as its vet that served (that's counting Ike as a WWI vet, although he was also WWI) Both the Civil War and the Second World War were long tail conflicts as far as vets becoming President -- from Grant to McKinley we were electing Civil War Vets and WWII vets were getting in until 1992 when Bush the first finished up his term.

Korea may or may not be an exception -- Carter was a Korean War era vet, but studying nuclear subs did not see action.

So McCain is the last hope for the Vietnam vets.

No Comment

While I was growing up, my mom used to get MS. Magazine. It had a section called "No Comment" the simply reprinted the most amazing sexist documents or other things they found. It was the most interesting part of the magazine.

Here is something that I am just not going to comment on:

At one of the precinct caucus in Nevada they have break a tie in dividing up 5 delegates. So they drew cards. The Obama person drew the ten of Spades. He was beaten by the Clinton supporter who drew the Queen of Hearts.

Even I didn't think they could go lower

I really thought some kind of bottom had been hit in 2000 in the SC primary when McCain was attacked for having a "black" daughter -- he had adopted a girl from Mother Teresa's orphanage in Bangladesh.

But now a hit piece is circulating accusing him of cooperating with the North Vietnamese and being a bad pilot! http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/01/slime-time-begi.html I guess it is the ultimate blame the victim.

(I admit I had pledged to not blog on politics, but somethings just call for it).

Causation v. Correlation

Here are three of my favorites -- I think they have shaped how I view the world.

1. In the fifties a series of studies showed that children who grew up with nightlights in their rooms tended to need glasses when they got older. So parenting advice was to avoid putting nightlights into children's rooms. But later studies re-crunched the data and what they found was that parents with bad eyes had trouble seeing in the dark and had a greater tendency to put nightlights in their kid's rooms. So the kids needed glasses not because of the nightlights, but because of genetics.

2. I remember in my psych text book's discussion of suicide they had a long discussion of the symbolism of jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. It was the furthest point West, the end of the line, etc. Then the book noted the supreme irony that every one who jumped off the bridge jumped looking back at the city, not out towards the ocean.

Years later when I lived in San Francisco, I would walk across the bridge. I noticed that the walkway was only the city side -- so if you wanted to jump, as opposed to being hit by a car -- you had to jump facing the city.

3. There was a doctoral dissertation about the vast vast majority of American barns being painted red. It looked at the symbolism of the color red, it examined the barn colors in the various countries that emigrants came from. Finally, it concluded that barns were painted red because red paint is made from iron oxide -- in other words -- you can make it from rusty nails and it is the cheapest paint to make to cover large areas.