October 12, 2016: This is NOT a form of brainwashing!

October 12 in history:

1492 – Christopher Columbus's expedition makes landfall in the Caribbean, specifically in The Bahamas. The explorer believes he has reached the Indies.

Elementary school told me this was because he didn't think the world was flat. And I'm like, how did this voyage change anyone's mind about that?

1799 – Jeanne Geneviève Labrosse was the first woman to jump from a balloon with a parachute, from an altitude of 900 meters.

I totally didn't know parachutes were that old. Or even balloons.

1822 – Pedro I of Brazil is proclaimed the emperor of the Empire of Brazil.

"Empire." He keeps saying that word. I don't think it means what he thinks it means.

1892 – The Pledge of Allegiance is first recited by students in many US public schools, as part of a celebration marking the 400th anniversary of Columbus's voyage.

This is NOT a form of brainwashing! This is NOT a form of brainwashing!




Birthday Quotes

"To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worth while. The natural laziness of the mind tempts one to eschew authors who demand a continuous effort of intelligence. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.

People tell me that they must read the papers so as to know what is going on. In the first place, they could hardly find a worse guide. Most of what is printed turns out to be false, sooner or later. Even when there is no deliberate deception, the account must, from the nature of the case, be presented without adequate reflection and must seem to possess an importance which time shows to be absurdly exaggerated; or vice versa. No event can be fairly judged without background and perspective."

"Falsehood is invariably the child of fear in one form or another."

"The customer is usually wrong; but statistics indicate that it doesn't pay to tell him so."

"As soon as you put men together, they somehow sink, corporatively, below the level of the worst of the individuals composing it."

"How right politicians are to look upon their constituents as cattle! Anyone who has any experience of dealing with any class as such knows the futility of appealing to intelligence, indeed to any other qualities than those of brutes."

- Aleister Crowley (12 October 1875 – 1 December 1947)


Happy Birthday Jane Siberry!

I heard this during my years in Canada. This tune often runs in my head,




Socials Media roundup

If I see you justify Trump, call "locker room talk" stuff that isn't said in locker rooms, or try to make a point about "hypocrisy," expect to see this in your comments section.

ns

If Mr. Trump said that the 3 demonstrably innocent men charged in the Duke Lacrosse case were guilty, would you still support him?

How is saying that the Central Park Five are guilty any different?

On CBS This Morning (or whatever it's called), professional athletes said Mr. Trump was actually denigrating them because that is NOT locker room talk.

This election has made the IQ of several friends fall by dozens of points.