The Linear Canvas

It always has really bothered me when someone would say they hated history in school. The nicest thing I can say is, that’s dumb. The other is that because so many people feel that way, we are doomed to repeat the lessons America has already learned, but also lessons that other nations have learned and sometimes had to re-learn.

Yesterday my wife called me with a question about which U.S. president signed the Declaration of Independence first. Her company was having a contest featuring Independence Day trivia. The choices were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, or John Adams. Only two future presidents signed the document, Jefferson and Adams. So that would eliminate George Washington from consideration entirely.

There were two procedures in place for the signing of the Declaration of Independence:

1. The colonies’ (states) delegates signed first in the order of north to south.
2. The signers signed the document from right to left.

The only exception was John Hancock, the president of the Continental Congress, who signed first.

The only reason I can think of for this procedure was a possible compromise to allow the northern states the honor of actually signing the document first, but it would appear to the British or any other interested party at the time, that the southern states had that honor. It probably was to keep everybody happy at the meeting. If you didn’t like history in the 21st century, It certainly would appear that the answer to the question, reading left to right, was Thomas Jefferson.

Knowing the procedure in place, at the time, would not allow you to come to that conclusion though. As John Adams was from Massachusetts and Thomas Jefferson from Virginia, looking at a map would show Massachusetts north of Virginia and looking at the document will show John Adams’ signature on the upper right at the bottom of the page.

Therefore the answer is John Adams.

When my wife returned home, she told me that the “official” answer she was given was Thomas Jefferson. I suppose someone just looked at the document and figured that it was signed left to right and John Adams must have arrived late to the meeting.

The world will not end because of that error. But it saddens me that July 4th in America is more about contests and mattress sales than remembering our country’s independence from the distant rule of kings, queens, and the Church of England. Many love the fireworks just to see something get blown up more than the symbol of our Independence they are.

I only expect the situation to get worse in the future.

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, THE TRUTH IS THE GREATEST ENEMY OF THE STATE." — Joseph Goebbels, German Minister of Propaganda, 1933-1945

I saw this photo and it reminded me of a woman I knew named Sue, that used to work for the Psychic Friends Network. She was a nice person that, I’ll only say, was just a little odd at times. She had also taken a mystical sounding name and was using it when she talked to her telephone customers.

The Psychic Friends Network was a company that did a lot of infomercials on TV starring singer Dionne Warwick in the 1990’s when the 900 number business was first getting popular. A few years later the bottom fell out of the Psychic Friends business and they closed and disappeared. Not long after that Sue came over to visit and told us that she had just been laid off from her job at Psychic Friends.

I smiled wryly and said, “Didn’t you see that coming?

Not thinking much about it, she said “No.”

If this had been an actual emergency, you would’ve been instructed where to tune in your area for updated information. I repeat, this has been a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. This has only been a test.

Carl Sagan – ‘A Glorious Dawn’ with Stephen Hawking (Cosmos Remixed)

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch
You must first, invent the universe…

Click Here If The Above Player Does Not Work

The Symphony of Science

My dad had been interested in electronics and always tried to repair our televisions when he could. He had some miscellaneous hand tools and some test instruments including a vacuum tube tester. That was just enough exposure to make me think I wanted to be trained in electronics as well.

In the mid-1970’s, my school in London, Ohio had become involved in a joint vocational school (JVS) with a number of other local school systems. Each JVS program would last the final two years of high school and you would receive a certificate as well as a diploma at graduation. The stated purpose of this was probably to help train young people for the jobs of the future. I think the actual purpose, at least at first, was to get the deadwood out of the local school principal’s office and into the JVS principal’s office, at least for some students.

I was somewhere in between. I was a bit of a trouble maker and terribly unreliable. But I did have some history of getting decent grades with little effort, when I wanted to. That was quite unlike most of the other semi-permanent participants of the after school detention program that I belonged to.

Our local JVS was recruiting us as soon as the money became available and the school was being built. I remember the question I asked the recruiter was, would I have to cut my hair if I went there? I had been sent home many times the last two to three years by the principal because of my hair length. Luckily there was no rule, so I would be able to grow my hair as long as I wanted.

About the same time, I was becoming interested in making a career as an FM rock radio disk jockey. I loved music. I read every rock magazine I could get my hands on. I wanted to be a rock star first, but a radio disk jockey if that didn’t work out. A friend of mine and I both had thought that the electronics program at the JVS was the way to make that happen. He realized after one year that it wasn’t the path at all. He went back to regular high school in his senior year and became a relatively famous radio personality. I stayed in electronics at JVS and I became a cable guy. I’m still working on the rock star thing.

As the summer drew to a close I still had no idea that I would find a job in electronics before I actually learned anything about it.

Mabel

I had known Mrs. Francis (Mabel) for awhile. She had at one time also owned the State Restaurant. I had spent plenty of my lunch money there over the years. (See my post "Running From Rocks") I would never say that she had been rude to me or actually even nice to me. She just gave you that look. She knew you were there, but she just wasn’t that excited about it.

I had also been buying 45 rpm records at her radio/TV sales and repair business, Francis Radio and TV. It was just up the street from the restaurant and she co-owned it with her husband, Hobart.

When I was in grade school, I only received a small allowance from my parents each week. I couldn’t afford record albums, but music singles on 45’s were within my budget.  Buying records at Francis’ was more expensive than most of the other stores in London. You had to really want something badly to have to buy it there. In addition, Mrs. Francis would follow you around the store like she thought you were going to steal something.

Once I went to the door of their store, just after 5 o’clock with my sisters and it was unlocked. We went in and immediately noticed the lights were out. I called out, but no one was there. I don’t remember us taking anything. We just walked out. I told Hobart about it once and he looked at me like he was a little stunned to hear that. It was as if I knew something that he also knew about. He said he had some unreliable person working for him then. That was right around the time Mrs. Francis left the State Restaurant and began working in the TV shop with him full time.

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This a video of me on the roof of the Renaissance Center tower. It is the tallest building in Detroit, Michigan. It’s a wonder I wasn’t killed that day.

Click here to see the video if the above video player does not work

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eic_eOrQ8HA

This is a very funny Saturday Night Live sketch. It’s a tongue-in-check reference to the lies that the GOP, Fox News, and the health insurance cabal have been telling in the main stream media about Health Care reform.

(Hulu is about the worst video provider out there. Click Play below. Maybe it’ll work.)

You Can  Also Click Here For The Video

I guess I should have known that the threats to withhold campaign contributions, and whatever other methods the corporate insurance elite have been using to get the current administration back in line would work eventually. Now there’s talk that President Obama will announce his surrender to them on the health care issues that I think would have the biggest impact, Single Payer and/or the Public Option. I sent an e-mail to the White House this morning and this is what I wrote:

President Obama,

I am a life long Democrat. I supported you through most of your campaign. I have never voted for a non-Democrat for president.

Now that you have decided (?) to surrender to the medical cartel, first on single payer and now on a public health care option, my only thought is that how “they” have won and “you (alone)” have failed. Do you think Fox News will ever let you live this down? Fox and their paymasters have beaten you and they know it. I, for one, am ashamed. I am ashamed that lies and money have finally gotten to you. Maybe I am the one that failed in believing that you were capable or willing to change anything.

This was your Waterloo and you did not win. You just managed to have an orderly surrender.

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My father worked many different jobs in his life. He fought in a war and traveled all over the world and our country. All of this before I ever knew him. I talked to him many times about his life but in retrospect, I should have asked more about his experiences.

He would talk about his adventures in World War Two when the subject was brought up.  Many kids had fathers that had been in Korea or had missed both conflicts. His was a generation that sacrificed enormously for us all. Truly the greatest generation of our time. I was always very proud of his service to our country in World War Two.

My dad would tell me stories about the war but more often than not I was asking the questions. Many were inspired by the TV shows in the late sixties and early seventies that glorified American soldiers in Europe and Asia in the 1940’s. My dad’s all time favorite war themed TV program was called Bah Bah Blacksheep. It was based on a real WW2 fighter pilot, Pappy Boyington, in the South Pacific conflict. He would watch Combat!, which was about the American infantry in Europe , but being an Army Air Corps veteran, he preferred TV shows about fighter’s and bombers. There was a program on in the 1960’s about bombers called Twelve O’clock High that he liked. But he always complained that the featured B-17 bombers on the show, got all the publicity, but that B-24’s did all of the work.

America had been attacked and the U.S. government did a terrific job getting recruits for the war. My father was a little older at 28, than most recruits when he joined in the Army in 1942. He was trained in several parts of the country at being a soldier, repairing airplanes, and shooting large caliber machine guns. Because of that Army experience, when employed at a prison during the riots that followed the death of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, he was given a position on a large machine gun pointed at the prison door and told to kill anyone that came through it.

My dad was a right wing gunner on a B-24D Liberator and rose to the rank of Technical Sergeant in the Army Air Corps, which later became the Air Force. He was a tall man, so service in any of the confining turret spaces was right out. That was probably lucky for him. He was trained as an airplane mechanic. I know he had some mechanical experience from his jobs previous to joining the Army. I am not sure what help it was being a mechanic once you were on a bombing mission. He mentioned that the pilot allowed him to fly the B-24, but wouldn’t let him land it.

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