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Archives for November 2015

Squanto Was a Dick & Other Holiday Faves

November 27, 2015 by Bill McCormick

This is as historically accurate as anything you heard about Squanto.
This is as historically accurate as anything you heard about Squanto.
Everyone has their holiday traditions. Eating black eyed peas for New Year’s. Going to a Sadie Hawkins’ dance for Valentine’s Day. Getting hammered to honor an aesthetic patron saint. Wallowing in pagan fertility rituals to commemorate the resurrection of Christ. Using high explosives to celebrate our peaceful freedoms. Dressing up as sex starved maniacs who just escaped from a cave to revere our dead ancestors and, of course, memorializing the birth of a man dedicated to poverty and peace by spending spending fucking obscene amounts of money and fighting like wet cats over a toy. But the one holiday that seems pure is Thanksgiving. After all, we have the stories and history straight from the Pilgrims’ mouths. Right? How could we get that wrong? As I noted back in 2013, we get that spectacularly wrong as well. As soon as the Pilgrims were fed and survived that first winter their “red skinned allies” quickly became “bloodthirsty savages” so they could justify taking their land and resources. And that’s just the most obvious problem.

[EDIT] It has come to our attention that the Mayflower not only brought the Pilgrims to the US but also orphans the British government no longer wished to support (i.e., feed). Most of them died within the first year.

Read on to get completely depressed.

********************************

I have often called Thanksgiving the red headed step child of holidays. Now I have made red headed step children mad. So I’ll apologize to them – sorry, I tend to be a callous oaf – and just note that this holiday kind of gets shoved in the middle of other stuff. Most people go from the sexy cool of Halloween to the fiscal gluttony of Christmas without pausing. It’s gotten so bad that Sarah Palin was forced to announce she was against the War on Christmas in October. So you can see how Thanksgiving could get trampled. And now, with more and more stores caving in to pubic pressure to be open on the holiday so people can shop on Gray Thursday, my new name for the day before Black Friday, the holiday is taking another hit. I’ve already noted that there are, historically, several days that have earned the title “Black Friday” and none of them have anything to do with shopping. Since this year the Thanksgiving radio show will be today I figured I should take a moment to remind people how screwed up this day really is. For example, kiddie pageants all over the country celebrate out faithful Indian companion, Squanto. As I have noted before, that presents a problem.

In fact when Squanto, the liaison between the Wampanoag Indians and the Pilgrims, died he was eulogized by William Bradford, the Pilgrims’ governor, with these words, “Here Squanto fell ill of Indian fever, bleeding much at the nose, which the Indians take as a symptom of death, and within a few days he died. He begged the Governor to pray for him, that he might go to the Englishman’s God in heaven, and bequeathed several of his things to his English friends, as remembrances. His death was a great loss.” Of course part of his conversion was probably due to the fact that the Wampanoag considered him a traitor, many historians believe he was poisoned by his own people, and even went so far as to assign him a second (a/k/a assistant) for his dealings with the Pilgrims. That was, pretty much, unheard of for Indians.

Yeah, well, given that Squanto was, for reasons unknown, shunned by his tribe, captured and made a slave, taken to Europe, escaped 6 years later to return to America, was shunned again by his people and then taken in, reluctantly, by the Pilgrims who offered him the worst eulogy ever. And the eulogy was due to the fact that his own people probably poisoned him. While a more interesting story than the one you’re used to it makes for a difficult children’s show.

Also, that “assistant” thing I mentioned was unheard of for the Indians. By treaty, hammered out by years of inter-tribal wars, each tribe assigned one voice for negotiations. So if that voice said the tribe would paint themselves pink and do the Hokey Pokey the tribe would simply say where and when. Assigning a second voice was a huge insult to Squanto and he would have known that.

There’s something else to consider as well. About 100 years previous there was a colony in Roanoke Virginia. According to people who have no clue about what they’re talking about, the colony disappeared without a trace. Even worse, they left a sign that no human can decipher with the word CROATOAN on it.

NNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Okay, say hi to the Croatoan Indians, also known as members of the Lumbee Indian family. Yes, they still exist and their web site is current. The settlers, as was common with English settlers, were woefully ignorant and arrogant. They crossed the ocean and just expected to find plenty of food and shelter. Oddly this wasn’t a good plan. While the land had been tended by the Indians who died out from the plague earlier, food still requires agriculture, a skill that eluded these city bred immigrants. So, hungry and lonely, they walked about two miles down river to the Croatoan settlement where the natives were naturists.

In other words their options were starvation and death or an island full of naked natives who were willing to share their food. They wisely chose door number 2.

Now, as I noted, English settlers were ignorant and arrogant. The Pilgrims were no different. When they arrived and found blue eyed, red skinned, natives who spoke English it never occurred to them that there might be an interesting story behind that. In fact they barely mentioned it. Because, just like in Star Trek, that’s the way things were supposed to be.

Oh, and Squanto wasn’t one of those. He learned English the old fashioned way, from his captors.

Anyway, thanks to Coolest Holiday Parties, we have a list of stupid trivia for you to win bar bets with.

The traditional cornucopia was a curved goat’s horn filled to brim with fruits and grains. According to Greek legend, Amalthea (a goat) broke one of her horns and offered it to Greek God Zeus as a sign of reverence. As a sign of gratitude, Zeus later set the goat’s image in the sky also known as constellation Capricorn. Cornucopia is the most common symbol of a harvest festival. A Horn shaped container, it is filled with abundance of the Earth’s harvest. It is also known as the ‘horn of plenty’.

It was not until 1941, that congress declared Thanksgiving as a national holiday. It was declared to be the fourth Thursday in November.

The first known thanksgiving feast or festival in North America was celebrated by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado and the people he called “Tejas” (members of the Hasinai group of Caddo-speaking Native Americans).

Here’s one of those funny Thanksgiving facts: Turkeys have heart attacks. When the Air Force was conducting test runs and breaking the sound barrier, fields of turkeys would drop dead.

Turducken, a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken, is becoming more popular in Thanksgiving (originated in Louisiana). A turducken is a de-boned turkey stuffed with a de-boned duck, which itself is stuffed with a small de-boned chicken. The cavity of the chicken and the rest of the gaps are filled with, at the very least, a highly seasoned breadcrumb mixture (although some versions have a different stuffing for each bird).

Fossil evidence shows that turkeys roamed the Americas 10 million years ago.

91% of Americans eat turkey on Thanksgiving Day.

There are regional differences as to the “stuffing” (or “dressing”) traditionally served with the turkey. Southerners generally make theirs from cornbread, while in other parts of the country white bread is the base. One or several of the following may be added: oysters, apples, chestnuts, raisins, celery and/or other vegetables, sausage or the turkey’s giblets.

Thomas Jefferson thought the concept of Thanksgiving was “the most ridiculous idea I’ve ever heard.”

Every President since Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving Day. But in 1939, 1940, and 1941 Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed Thanksgiving the third Thursday in November to lengthen the holiday shopping season. This upset people.

Fifty percent of Americans put the stuffing inside the Turkey.

The North American holiday season (generally the Christmas shopping season in the U.S.) traditionally begins when Thanksgiving ends, on “Black Friday” (the day after Thanksgiving); this tradition has held forth since at least the 1930s.

On the West Coast of the US, Dungeness crab is common as an alternate main dish instead of turkey, as crab season starts in early November.

Corn is one of the popular symbols of thanksgiving. It came in many varieties and colors – red, white, yellow and blue. Some Americans considered blue and white corn sacred. The oldest corns date 7000 years back and were grown in Mexico.

Benjamin Franklin wanted the national bird to be a turkey.

Several people wanted to have an official day of thanksgiving, including George Washington, who proclaimed a National Day of Thanksgiving in 1789. Several people did not want it including President Thomas Jefferson.

Here’s one of the most unbelievable Thanksgiving facts: The Guinness Book of Records states that the greatest dressed weight recorded for a turkey is 39.09 kg (86 lbs), at the annual “heaviest turkey” competition held in London, England on December 12, 1989.

The first Thanksgiving was not a feast, but rather a time when Native Americans helped Pilgrims by bringing them food and helping them build off the land.

More than 40 million green bean casseroles are served on Thanksgiving.

Turkey is the traditional dish for the Thanksgiving feast. In the US, about 280 million turkeys are sold for the Thanksgiving celebrations. There is no official reason or declaration for the use of turkey. They just happened to be the most plentiful meat available at the time of the first Thanksgiving in 1621, starting the tradition.

Twenty percent of cranberries eaten are eaten on Thanksgiving.

The preliminary estimate of the number of turkeys raised in the United States in 2005 is 256 million. That’s down 3 percent from 2004. The turkeys produced in 2004 weighed 7.3 billion pounds altogether and were valued at $3.1 billion.

Turkeys were one of the first animals in the Americas to be domesticated.

Columbus thought that the land he discovered was connected to India, where peacocks are found in considerable number. And he believed turkeys were a type of peacock (they’re actually a type of pheasant). So he named them “tuka”, which is “peacock” in the Tamil language of India.

The ‘wishbone’ of the turkey is used in a good luck ritual on Thanksgiving Day.

The cranberry is a symbol and a modern diet staple of thanksgiving. Originally called crane berry, it derived its name from its pink blossoms and drooping head, which reminded the Pilgrims of a crane.

The Plymouth Pilgrims dined with the Wampanoag Indians for the First Thanksgiving.

The different nicknames for Thanksgiving Day: “Turkey Day” (after the traditional Thanksgiving dinner), “T-Day” (an abbreviation of either “Thanksgiving Day” or “Turkey Day”), “Macy’s Day (this is exclusive to New York City – it is a reference to the Macy’s Day Parade), “Yanksgiving” (Canadians sometimes call the Thanksgiving in the US as “Yanksgiving” to distinguish it from the Canadian Thanksgiving holiday.)

The First Thanksgiving lasted for three days.

Contrary to popular belief, Native Americans did not eat cranberries. They did, however, find them extremely useful for dying fabric and decorating pottery.

The Native Americans wore deerskin and fur, not blankets.

A spooked turkey can run at speeds up to 20 miles per hour. They can also burst into flight approaching speeds between 50-55 mph in a matter of seconds.

Turkeys are first documented over two thousand years ago in Central America and Mexico.

In October of 1777 all 13 colonies celebrated Thanksgiving for the first time; however it was a one-time affair commemorating a victory over the British at Saratoga.

There are three places in the United States named after the holiday’s traditional main course — Turkey, Texas; Turkey Creek, La.; and Turkey, N.C. There are also nine townships around the country named “Turkey,” with three in Kansas.

Sarah Josepha Hale, a magazine editor, campaigned to make Thanksgiving a National Holiday in 1827 and succeeded.

Wild turkeys, while technically the same species as domesticated turkeys, have a very different taste from farm-raised turkeys. Almost all of the meat is “dark” (even the breasts) with a more intense turkey flavor. Older heritage breeds also differ in flavor.

Actually, Sarah Josepha Hale started campaigning for Thanksgiving in 1827 but it wasn’t designated as a holiday until Lincoln signed the Thanksgiving Proclamation in 1863.

Old Abe did love his proclamations.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
Visit us on Rebel Mouse for even more fun!
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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: croatoan, indian, pilgrim, plymouth, squanto, thanksgiving

Your 2016 Mapped Out

November 25, 2015 by Bill McCormick

Not Margot Robbie.
Not Margot Robbie.
One of the fun parts about doing The Big Wake Up Call every Friday, at 9:10 AM (CT/US), is interacting with the listeners. They call, they write, they send smoke signals. Whatever they can think of to get my attention. I even had one young lady figure out which bar I frequented and show up there. I’m sure I won’t need a restraining order. But there is one thing we do on the show that I kind of gloss over here. And that is stuff about superhero movies. It’s not that I don’t like writing about them, it’s just that there are so many click-bait sites dedicated to them that I hate to end up lumped in with them. Still, every now and then it’s worth the risk. Since this is a holiday week, and you’ve got some time to kill, I figure today’s as good a day as any to jump into the fray.
[Read more…] about Your 2016 Mapped Out

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Playing the Race & Religion Game

November 24, 2015 by

Do you think the zebra pillow cases are a bit much?
Do you think the zebra pillow cases are a bit much?
Recently Donald Trump’s Twitter account busted out the most racist, and factually inaccurate, graphic anyone (who’s not a member of the KKK) had ever seen. It showed that 8 out of 10 whites who were murdered were murdered by black people. Common sense tells you that’s bullshit, but common sense has very little to do with what Trump is selling. He, and the rest of the Republican Presidential candidates, except for John Kasich who doesn’t stand a blowjob’s chance in a nunnery of winning, are all about pandering to people’s basest instincts. You can tell someone is doing that whenever you hear them say “Everyone knows …” No, everyone doesn’t. In fact, I would be hard pressed to find a small room full of people who “know” what they’re spewing.

“The majority of (insert religion) want to kill you.” No they don’t. In fact we’re going to play a numbers game in a minute based on just that subject but, first, I’d like to give all my non-racist readers a reason for hope.

After World War One Germany was subjected to the Versaille Treaty. This was the closest thing to bureaucratic rape the world had ever seen. In the old days conquering armies would kill your men, rape your women and steal your wealth. That was back when things were kinder and gentler. The Treaty of Versaille upped the ante dramatically. It destroyed Germany and left it with no hope of ever becoming a viable country again.

The people were angry and looking for someone to blame. In the middle of that cauldron roiling with anger fell the Great Depression. At its height, in Germany, a wheelbarrow full of money might, if the baker was a nice person, get you a loaf of bread.

Now, here’s what you need to remember. Germany was one country, mostly one race, spoke one language, lived in one time zone, was increasingly isolated, and needed one target for their rage. Along came Adolph and his Merry Band of Miscreants, and he gave them one; the Jews. Oh, sure, he tossed in fags, dykes, Catholics, and anyone of color too, but those were the icing on the cake. The real dough, both literally and figuratively, was in the Jews.

Keep this in mind as I continue.

There is now a vocal movement in America that closely resembles Hitler’s early Nazis. They’ve substituted Muslims for Jews – hey, why not? They’re all middle eastern – and tossed in fags, dykes, and anyone of color too. They don’t discriminate when it comes to discrimination. The main difference this time around is there is a large enough number of Catholics who agree with them that they get left off the hate train.

At least for now. Given Pope Francis’ stance on stupidity I don’t see that lasting.

There are other differences too. Unlike post war Germany, America has multiple races, a fuckton of prominent languages, four time zones (excluding Hawaii & territories), and is drifting towards inclusion as opposed to isolation.

A big reason for that last statement is the fact that by this time in 2050, the United States of America will no longer have an Anglo majority. For the smart people that means they’d better learn to get along with their new neighbors or move.

To which I might ask, “move where?”

There are only two countries in the world aligned with Trump’s beliefs and social policies who also have enough infrastructure to handle the influx of his supporters. Those would be Iran and Saudi Arabia.

If you click the previous link you’ll read what was noted here back in 2012;

NEITHER allows the teaching of evolution; BOTH require prayer in schools; NEITHER allows gay rights, especially not gay marriage; NEITHER allows abortion; women in both countries know their place and don’t complain about it; everybody and his brother owns a gun; BOTH are theocracies run strictly by the laws of the old testament; and BOTH have populations with very few Black people and NO Mexicans. It’s practically paradise! Conservative Heaven on Earth!

I’m not worried about Trump claiming to be a Christian any more than I am about any of his followers. He’d sell his wife to a dog food company if it suited his goals. Seeing his toupee howling Alluha Akbar isn’t a stretch at all. The same holds true for his followers once they figure out the benefits to them.

Most of them seem to be incapable of reading a bible anyway, let alone following it.

“But, what about all those Muslim terrorists?” you whine. Good question. What about them?

“Where are they?”

Best question ever.

Let’s run some comparisons to help you out. There are 142 registered Neo-Nazi groups in the US. By “registered” I mean they have Facebook pages, places to hang out, and so on. There’s no ‘registry’ at Bed Bath and Beyond for hate groups.

There are another 72 chapters of the Klan. In Chicago our chapter is called the United Northern and Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Feel free to visit them. Some of them have lovely rainbow colored robes.

You’ll note that irony isn’t a thing with racists.

Let’s take them at their word and say they each have around 1,000 members. Radicalized racists, if you will.

Obviously this doesn’t include “soft” racism. The kind that denies people jobs, homes, or fair rates at a bank. Then those numbers go up dramatically. And sadly. In this regard the U.S. is the tenth most racist country in the world, with India coming in #1.

Gandhi would not be pleased. God knows I’m not.

Okay, back to our radicalized racists.

Let’s start with the Klan.

72,000 armed Klan members, if they banded together, could take over cities like Parma, Oklahoma or Lubbock, Texas. They would be able to do so since the local police in places like that are poorly trained and likely to sympathize. Also, there’s a lot of empty land around them they could use to fortify their positions.

The 142,000 Neo-Nazis, banded together, could take over cities like Nashville, Tennessee or Atlanta Georgia. Again, they would be able to do so since the local police in places like that are poorly trained and likely to sympathize. And, again, suburban sprawl around those cities is thin. They could easily entrench themselves there.

Other members and sympathizers could, should they wish, wreck havoc on soft targets in major cities. Bombs, shootings at nightclubs, the occasional public transportation massacre, and so on.

In neither case could they take over this, or any other, country.

Let me know if any of those scenarios sound familiar to you.

Now, on to Muslims. There are 1.75 Billion of them on the planet. Many talking heads on Fox News claim that 10% of them are radicalized. That would put 175,000,000 armed maniacs on the ground. That number could wipe out America, Canada, and Mexico in short order and then take on the world.

Even if all you watch is Fox News you know that hasn’t happened.

Not that the real number of Daesh members, a/k/a ISIS, a/k/a ISIL, is tiny. It’s not. There are an estimated 200,000 of them. Just a hair more than the number of armed Nazis in the US, and able to do about the same amount of damage.

Which is about where they’re at. They control an amount of real estate slightly smaller than Britain, but a lot of that is empty land or previously held by nomads or peasants.

Not exactly prime targets.

I’m not denigrating the people who live in those places. The reason there are so many refugees, multiplied by those fleeing the civil war in Syria, is due to the fact they’re not big fans of Daesh and its allies. Just like most Americans aren’t big fans of Neo-Nazis or the Ku Klux Klan. If those two groups embarked on the scenarios I posited above there would be millions of people fleeing. Hopefully nice countries like Canada, France, and Saudi Arabia would take them in.

Saudi Arabia? Yep.

You see, for better or worse, they are ruled by the Holy Qu’Ran. That book includes the Five Pillars of Islam. One of those pillars is called Zakat. It is widely interpreted to mean all followers must provide charity to those in need. Simply put, they don’t count refugees as refugees, so they end up not getting counted on the U.N.’s list. Instead they count them as “brothers and sisters in need” and just take them in.

Oddly, despite their inherent racism and backwards attitudes towards anyone different than them, they apply that rule to anyone who asks for help. They’re not well versed in irony either.

When you see that fatuous graphic showing all those empty tents in Saudi Arabia you need to keep a fact in mind.

I know, I know, facts are annoying.

Anyway, those tents are set aside for people who make the Hajj, a/k/a the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. So Saudis don’t put people there. They can’t risk them being occupied when the holy time arrives. Instead they put the refugees, sorry – brothers and sisters in need, in their homes or hotels or where ever they can. They have taken in several hundred thousand brothers and sisters this way. Including over 100,000 children they have enrolled in their schools. Just not a single “refugee.”

This is why words matter. As Neil Steinberg noted, calling the terrorists “radical Islamists” is a disservice to both words. They are no more adherents of Islam than Neo-Nazis or Klan members are Christians.

Fun side note. A growing number of Neo-Nazis are renouncing Christianity in favor of Odinism. All that peace and love shit makes them itch, so they’re joining a cult with a warrior ethos. Yes, they’re perverting its core beliefs too. They have to justify their hate somehow.

Call me when you hear the phrase “radical Odinists” on Fox. I’ll buy you a drink.

The point is, there aren’t nearly as many assholes in the world as you are being led to believe.

So why don’t we, or the Saudis, or anyone, just bomb the fuck out of them? Mostly for the same reason we wouldn’t bomb Parma, Lubbock, Nashville, or Atlanta. The terrorists hide amongst innocents. A rough guess averages the numbers of innocents at around ten per terrorist. I’ve seen estimates as high as fifty per terrorist. Either would be about the same as if the U.S. cities I noted, and their surrounding areas, above got over run. No matter which number you use that’s a lot of innocent lives we would be taking. Too many have already been lost this way, and that’s with everyone being as careful as they can.

So we tough it out. Knowing that, in the long run, they can’t win. Daesh has neither an air force nor a navy. They are stuck where they’re at. That’s why President Obama, correctly, professed they’re contained.

Are they still a threat? Absolutely. To individuals. Maybe a small city or two. Not to nations. That doesn’t mean we should discount them, it just means we should measure our responses and base them on reality. Then provide aid where we can.

Or, to make it real simple for you, don’t fear the victims.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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Filed Under: Uncategorized

Friday the 13th

November 13, 2015 by

I think we've covered them all.
I think we’ve covered them all.
Superstitions are silly things. Some are mere mnemonic devices that have taken on a life of their own. Don’t walk under a ladder is a good example. From a purely practical standpoint someone might drop something on your head. The same applies to opening an umbrella indoors. If you do that you suddenly have lots of sharp objects, the ribs and the tip, in an enclosed space where you could, literally, put someone’s eye out. 666 is supposed to be the number of the beast in Revelations. People believe this even though it’s been proven wrong on a few occasions. You see, some idiot monk, who lacked basic arithmetic and translation skills, wrote it wrong. The actual number is 616. Dr. Ellen Aitken, from McGill University, sums it up best. ““It’s a number puzzle — the majority opinion seems to be that it refers to [the Roman emperor] Nero. Revelation was actually a thinly disguised political tract, with the names of those being criticized changed to numbers to protect the authors and early Christians from reprisals. It’s a very political document. It’s a critique of the politics and society of the Roman empire, but it’s written in coded language and riddles.” In other words, it no more foretells the future than your weird Aunt Emma.

Cracked mirrors are another one. Some folks believe that mirrors don’t just reflect your awesome visage, they keep part of your soul. In backwards countries and in the American South people still cover mirrors when someone dies to prevent their souls from being trapped inside of them. The fear of black cats dates from the days of the plague and belief in witches. They were supposed to be familiars who served demonic masters and so on. It’s a mess. Look, I’ve owned several black cats and only one was even a little demonic and that was only when he was hungry.

I could go on and on and on and on and … you get the idea, but I won’t. Superstitions are the veils that tiny minds use to hide the light of reality.

A little over two years ago I wrote a nice history of Friday the 13th. It was, and is, festooned with those fact things you never find on the Internet any more. So, in honor of our current dose of Triskaidekaphobia, I give you Friday the 13th, UNFILTERED!!!

MU HU HA HA HA

+++++++++++++++++++

If you happen to be a prestidigitating paraskevidekatriaphobic then today is wrought with horrible magic for you. For the rest of us it’s another day that’s just as good or bad as any other. Today, if you watch the news, you will be assaulted with lists of all the horrible things that have happened on Friday the 13th through the years. The first will be the fall of the Knights Templar at the duplicitous hands of King Philip IV of France and Pope Clement V on Friday the 13th in October of 1307. That one’s a juicy one since it features the only publicly recorded curse attributed to God. Jacques de Molay, as he was about to be burned at the stake, claimed that God would strike both Philip and Clement dead for their deeds and, indeed, both men were dead within less than two months.

You will also hear from many noodle headed experts who will claim this is an ancient tradition, some will say dating back to the bible. These people are, using the technical term, deluded morons. Fridays have been bad news for a while, even Chaucer wrote disparagingly about them in his Canterbury Tales back in the 1,400’s. And the number 13 has, for reasons lost in the mists of time, been one to avoid since Babylon reigned supreme in the Middle East. It is even highly likely that Jesus knew about the superstition and selected the number of His apostles to prove the belief baseless. That would fit well with many of His reality based teachings.

But for any reference specific to Friday the 13th you need to be far more modern.

In 1907 an author named Thomas Lawson released a novel called “Friday the 13th.” In it a man uses superstition and greed to con a bunch of people and manipulate the stock market and cause it to crash. It was a popular book at the time and is also the first recorded use of Friday the 13th. So much for ancient and mystical. If you’re over 50, your grandparents could have had a slightly used copy of this book.

They may have even noted the eerie similarities in his book to the real stock market crash of 1929.

Still other featherheads will point to the 1993 study published in the British Medical Journal which compared the number of auto accidents on any given Friday the 6th versus Friday the 13th and said “Friday the 13th is unlucky for some. The risk of hospital admission as a result of a transport accident may be increased by as much as 52 percent. Staying home is recommended.”

Smart people just went “Hey, wait a minute, that research is horribly flawed.” And they are 100% right. When you compare Friday the 13th with other stressful days such as tax day, major holidays and so on, the accident rate falls right into the norm. In other words, events that cause people to stress out also cause them to become distracted and those distractions lead to accidents.

You know that phrase “It’s all in your head?” Well, in this case it’s true.

Just FYI, the word paraskevidekatriaphobic comes from the Greek; Paraskevi means Friday and dekatreis means 13. You can also call the fear of Friday the 13th Friggatriskaidekaphobia in honor of the Norse God Frigga whose name is where the word Friday comes from.

Yeah, a little etymology to brighten your day.

Okay, now for some meaningless fun.

In Spanish speaking countries, people fear Tuesday the Thirteenth or Martes Trece as it is called. The reason is that that was the day that Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Empire. That tradition does date back hundreds of years and is well documented.

In Italy, home of the Catholic Church and what many believe to be the root of the superstition, the number 13 is considered lucky and the day they avoid is Friday the 17th. So, go figure.

Some folks can’t resist tweaking their noses at superstitions. Black Sabbath released their debut album on Friday the 13th in February of 1970 and they did okay. The 13th book of A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket (a/k/a Daniel Handler) was released on Friday, October 13th, 2006 and he’s made goo-gobs (that’s a financial term) of money. And Adventure/Quest World, an online video game featuring the music of one of my faves, Voltaire, features famous guests every Friday the 13th.

This year there will be three Friday the 13ths and they are spaced 13 weeks apart.

Heh.

But, far be it for me to deny you something legitimate to worry about. On April 13, 2029 (a Friday), the asteroid 99942 Apophis (named after an angry Egyptian god) will come so close to the earth that it will be closer to our atmosphere than our man made satellites. If it gets caught in our gravity well it could do damage of apocalyptic proportions.

Or it could just ricochet harmlessly off into space.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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Filed Under: Uncategorized

Didja Know?

November 6, 2015 by

Nuff said.
Nuff said.

This has been a strange week for me. Every time something seemed to be headed in the right direction it would blow up. In one instance, literally. Fortunately no one was injured but it does sum things up nicely. In the case of the last event a gentleman was trying to prove that gasoline couldn’t burn if struck with a lit match. This is, in fact, true. However, like all facts gleaned exclusively from the internet, some context is due. While liquid gasoline requires a much higher temperature to burn, otherwise your car would be a rolling bomb, gas fumes do not. Especially if they are mixed with enough oxygen. Then you get an instant flame thrower. As I said no one was hurt so here’s hoping lesson learned. Just FYI, don’t try this at home. In the right, rare, circumstances, you can light the gas on fire. At least the top layer and fumes which will start a nasty burn off.

Now, what good is this lesson? Well, oddly enough, it could help keep generations of others from making the same mistakes. As long as they’re your descendants. Darold Treffert, at Scientific American, explains how your memories become their’s.

Steven Pinker’s 2003 book, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, refutes the “blank slate” theories of human development. Brian Butterworth, in his 1999 book, What Counts: How Every Brain is Hardwired for Math, points out that babies have many specialized innate abilities, including numerical ones that he attributes to a “number module” encoded in the human genome from ancestors 30,000 years ago.

Whether called genetic, ancestral or racial memory, or intuitions or congenital gifts, the concept of a genetic transmission of sophisticated knowledge well beyond instincts, is necessary to explain how prodigious savants can know things they never learned.

We tend to think of ourselves as being born with a magnificent and intricate piece of organic machinery (“hardware”) we call the brain, along with a massive but blank hard drive (memory). What we become, it is commonly believed, is an accumulation and culmination of our continuous learning and life experiences, which are added one by one to memory. But the prodigious savant apparently comes already programmed with a vast amount of innate skill -and knowledge in his or her area of expertise–factory-installed “software” one might say–which accounts for the extraordinary abilities over which the savant innately shows mastery in the face of often massive cognitive and other learning handicaps. It is an area of memory function worthy of much more exploration and study.

Experiments have been done on mice wherein they were exposed to pleasure when faced with one object and pain with another. Other mice were faced with the same objects with no ramifications. The spawn of the mice that had faced ramifications would gravitate towards the pleasure inducing item, while avoiding the other, even though they had no reason to do so. Spawn of the mice not affected simply went out and lived their little mousey lives.

These experiments are lending scientific credence to people who claim to experience past lives. Nothing supernatural at all, just a genetic memory that tagged along with your life.

So what else is trapped in those genes you’re carrying? Josh L. Davis, at IFL Science, says you have the ability to regrow limbs.

Of all living four-legged animals, known as tetrapods, only salamanders have the ability to truly regenerate their limbs. Scientists have long questioned this impressive feat, because all other tetrapods develop their limbs in a strikingly similar way, making salamanders seem like the black sheep. But new research hints at the possibility that rather than being an evolutionary oddity, salamanders are actually the only ones to have retained this ability, which was once common to all tetrapods.

The study, published in Nature, looked back at fossil tetrapods from the early lineages of both amphibians (frogs, salamanders, and caecilians) and amniotes (mammals, birds, and reptiles), from around 300 million years ago. This is roughly 30 million years after the two groups are thought to have split, and so the logic goes that if fossils from both lineages at around this time share characteristics, it’s highly likely that the last common ancestor before the split had these characteristics, too.

When animals re-grow limbs, they sometimes leave tell-tale signs such as fused digits, extra digits, or digits missing altogether. It was these signs that the researchers were looking for in the record from both groups, and this is exactly what the researchers found in the fossils from both lineages, indicating that they could both indeed regenerate body parts. This leaves the intriguing proposition, though, that while salamanders were able to hold onto limb regeneration, most other four-legged animals lost it.

“At first sight it is astonishing that a character that is so obviously beneficial like the capacity of limb regeneration has been lost in most extant tetrapods (i.e., in all amniotes),” Brown’s Florian Witzmann told IFLScience in an email. “We have no definite explanation for this, although a number of hypotheses exist related to the cost-benefit ratio of regeneration. Regeneration of limbs and other parts of the body is certainly energy expensive, and in some cases, the costs might be greater than any advantages.”

There are those who think that the regeneration genes might be able to be turned on in injured humans. It would have to be done under controlled circumstances and would require the patient to constantly have access to food, a/k/a fuel, but all the parts are there. We just don’t know how to make them work.

Yet.

Oh, and one last one you might be curious about; can processed meats cause cancer?

Short answer? Yes. But it’s not that simple. I’ll let Aaron E. Carroll from the NY Times explain.

The I.A.R.C. published that for each 50 grams of processed meat eaten daily, the risk of colon cancer goes up by 18 percent. That sounds scary. But that’s a relative risk increase. What we really need to know is the absolute risk increase. I went to the National Cancer Institute’s colorectal cancer risk assessment calculator, and plugged in all of my information. I had to say I’m 50, because it doesn’t have risks for people younger than that. It determined that 50-year-old me has a lifetime risk of 2.7 percent of getting colon cancer.

This means that, if I buy what the W.H.O. is saying, if I decided today to start eating an extra three pieces of bacon every day for the next 30 years, my risk of getting colon cancer might go from 2.7 percent to 3.2 percent. In other words, if 200 people like me made that decision, one extra personmight get cancer. The other 199 would be unaffected.

Saliva causes cancer, but only when swallowed in small amounts over long periods of time.

That’s not nearly as scary as what many headlines would have you believe. Even with all that processed meat (which I am not going to eat), a 0.5 percent increase in the lifetime risk of something is still pretty small. Eating it occasionally, which is more likely, is not going to affect my lifetime risk measurably at all.

Let’s be clear. Rational people are willing to accept small risks of harm to obtain something they value. The example I always like to use is cars. The No. 1 killer of children in the United States is, by far, accidents. Every time we put a child in a car, we are exposing them to the thing most likely to kill them.

We don’t see headlines like “Cars Found to Kill Kids in Record Numbers!” or “Putting a Child in a Car Increases Their Risk of Death by 20 percent!” That’s because we have all recognized that while cars do increase the risk of a bad outcome, the gains from driving outweigh the potential and very small absolute risks of death.

The same is true of many things. I like Scotch. I like skiing. I like the occasional steak. All of these things may increase my absolute risk of death someday by some very tiny amount, but the daily happiness and satisfaction I gain from them outweigh those future, and most likely very small, risks.

What I said about red meat still holds, as do my recommendations for healthy eating. If you’re consuming multiple portions of processed meat a day, then you may see some small benefit in the lifetime risk of cancer by cutting back. But if you’re like most people I know, enjoying bacon or prosciutto a couple of times a week, this news most likely doesn’t affect you at all.

Your body is sturdier than you might think and a lot of that comes from thousands of generations figuring out how to survive and passing that info down to you. In other words, hoist a beer to your great-great ancestor, enjoy a nice BLT, and try to pass useful memories to your descendants.

Beer Genes de Insobrio from Nautilus Films Argentina on Vimeo.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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