Of course I “Love My Country.” But let’s be real for a minute on this day and remember that the “Founding Fathers” would probably not have associated with you unless you wore a powdered wig and banged your slaves. It’s fine to celebrate our past, but don’t color history in such majestic and glorious shades that you repaint it entirely.

We still have a long way to go as a country. We are just as divided today as we were then. 40-45% of the colonists supported the rebellion. 15-20% of the population remained loyal to the British Crown and the remaining 35-45% attempted to remain neutral.

Hear hear. History is useless — indeed, dangerously deceptive — if it is incomplete. For instance, did you know that there weren’t “Presidents” before 1789? It took a long time to get things sorted out, even after hostilities with Great Britain were finished.

Since the 4th of July is symbolic, one day on which to try to celebrate decades of turmoil and upheaval during the founding of a nation, just settle for enjoying your burgers, beer, watermelon, and fireworks. Save serious thought for tomorrow.

This post is dedicated to great-great-great-great-great-uncle correction: first-cousin-seven-times-removed Thomas Mifflin, who served in the Continental Army and was the fifth President. Of course, that’s President of the United States in Congress Assembled, before there was a Constitution… but I’ll take what I can get.

What 1936 Betty Crocker advised us: Men are incompetent housekeepers who transition from mooching off their mother to mooching off their wife, and of course are never satisfied with the cooking of the wife.

Which, if you think about it, means that cooking skills are quantitatively getting worse with every generation. In another few centuries, we’ll all be putting dirt on plates and sobbing apologies for not being able to get the worms “just like mother used to make”.

Maybe I should stop thinking about it.

Anyway, the biscuit-loving husband picture is a riot. Can’t say it much better than Lidian did…

Check him out, holding up the Bisquick biscuit and grinning. Getting to be a swell cook? Getting to be? How many goddamn batches of biscuits does a person have to make and shove down his throat before he coughs up an unadulterated compliment!

Gee, isn’t that swell?

We could also discuss the aluminum, electively aborted fetal cells, calf serum, etc. in vaccines, and how vaccinations are cultured in ground up monkey kidneys and other animal byproducts. Why don’t you all start looking outside the box instead of trying so hard to stay in. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that vaccines are not good for us. Our GOVERNMENT OWNED vaccine Gaurdisil has been killing young girls. Can we say population control? Just because you can’t see through the bullshit doesn’t mean that the people who can are crazy. Knowledge is power. You should really read more.

Ma’am, it’s hardly useful to be so far outside the box that you can’t even see it.

• In an amazing coincidence, I do have the superpower of being able to see through bullshit. Yours is remarkably transparent for being heaped so high.
• Merck owns Gardasil, not the government.
• I certainly can say “population control” (can we say “pompous bitch”, hmm?), but: the 11 deaths that were claimed (with no worthwhile evidence) to be linked to Gardasil… 11 dead out of the thousands vaccinated is a ridiculously ineffective way of controlling a population, even if there was a conspiracy to control the population by murdering young girls with vaccines, which there isn’t.
• While we could discuss miscellaneous bullshit theories, I won’t, since you have only provided scary buzzwords instead of any vague semblance of evidence or facts. Find history, not histrionics, then we can talk.

Hope your kids have fun with mumps, chickenpox, diphtheria, hepatitis, and cervical cancer. Just keep them the hell away from mine while they’re playing Typhoid Mary.

What’s extra scary about this commenter: she posted from within the healthcare system. Her IP address 209.37.141.254 [gnat-corp.osfhealthcare.org] indicates she works with OSF Healthcare in Peoria, IL. She posted at 10pm, and I’m hoping that she was just visiting somebody in the hospital and used their computer, because the alternative is that she’s a night nurse. It’s disturbing that somebody so completely unqualified in basic intelligence (not to mention scientific thought) might be treating sick people in Peoria.

This one is from some nephew of my great-great-great-grandfather.

Ottawa
Franklin County
Kansas
Febr’y 4th 1866
Mr. Andrew J. Smith

My Dear Uncle,

I will try and converse with you silently, but through asking medium (the sew) Etta has gone across the street to meeting to hear the old minister at Kastmison [??] deliver one of his good Sermons. But I am alone and did not nor do not feel very much like going to church. And I thought I could make it a very interesting moment to write to you.

In the first place, Dear Uncle, let our Conversations one to the other be strictly Confidential, uttering truth and veracity, being honest and true to our trust, treating every Subject that may come before our observation or hearing with Justice and Prosperity to all. Too doubtless are our Correspondence comes to “finish” it will be interesting to both.

In the first place I wish to give you my Position and Circumstances in life, what they have been and what they are now and what I would wish to be in the future. As a young man in Business I am considered by those who have tried my facilities to be very good, honest, and prudent, and an eye to Business. My Circumstances when I cam out of the army were good. I had the means to have gone right along with anything. But my mother disappointed me Sadly and almost left me with poverty staring, staring me in the face. My wife when I first came here became very sick with Bilious intermittent fever and almost died. But medical aid restored her to very good health again, and when her Doctor Bill and my Bill of Expense in the Law Suit for my mules, I had 15 cents in Currency. I sat down and looked at the world and then at my wife and myself, and I concluded work was no disgrace, however talented, and I went to hard labor at a saw mill here. From that to clerking and now I have just finished a small building here on Main Street at an expense of $202. The lot I built upon is to be paid for within a Year from the time I came upon it, as for $150, I am to pay yearly $20.00 for rent of said lot. I have a choice to buy at what town lots are selling for or pay 20 a year for the lease of it. I desire to go into the Grocery Business and Tobacco & Cigar Business as I am a cigar maker by trade and also a Barber by trade. And I think by discreet management, I will in 40-50 years come out all right. My means are all in my house now. But if I can fill it by labor I will do so, and by the way if I should wish any of your assistance could you give it to me. I do not think I will need any assistance at present But in the Spring I may want more means than I will then have and if I should need ask it of you I will give you security if you desire it. But if I Borrow from you I will want 2 years time and pay the last cent on the money you furnish.

I may wish to Borrow $200 and with what I will then have I can open a good Business. But if I draw the $200 bounty the 161 [61?] soldiers or those who received only 100 I will need no assistance and if you know whether that Bounty Bill has passed let me know. I heard it had passed the house. I am working at my trade now and am doing very well considering I save about $5.00 per week a living beside. But I am going to make money faster soon if I have good success. I understand Mr. Donnbergh is agoing to move to this place but he can’t do any better than I. one consolation at least his money does not trouble him any I guess. I am well and Etta also. She sends love to you and Aunt Mary. Have you any cousins to me left. Don’t read this line only in the dark. I have no family left and a slim chance of if ever I have. Accept my love &c

Your nephew Henry

Ex-soldier, counting on an inheritance but ending up with a bilious wife and lien on his mules, ends up building a house in Ottawa Kansas and going into random business as a grocer/tobacconist/barber.

At least this man can spell; Andrew Smith’s brother-in-law wrote many letters home to his sister, and spelled everything phonetically. Arrrrrgh…

But reality is dull. Let’s amuse ourselves with a bit of ridiculous nonsense instead! Namely, that the explosion caused hyperfertility in local flora, now captured for the modern world in a nutritional supplement (originally found via Bad Astronomy Blog).

Rather than making a desert of the area, the event created a kind of Garden of Eden, an oasis of fertility resulting in “miracle harvests” of the plants grown there.

Oh, it gets better… with their the Tunguska Timeline.

1927-1930 … lush, green vegetation is emerging from beneath felled trees and charred earth.

ZOMG! The plants are growing back!

1931-1949 … While the world is in the throes of war and Russia suffers the oppression of Communism, the Tunguska plants are quietly thriving.

Amazing! Communism usually kills plants!

1950s … As WWII ends and the Cold War begins, Tunguska research becomes the passion of courageous scientists around the world whose curiosity can be slowed but not stopped by the Communists.

OH NOES! Communism also tries to kill scientific curiosity!

1980s … Menotti Galli of Bologna, Italy, visits Tunguska and determines that embedded in the Tunguska vegetation are unusual concentrations of essential minerals known for their ability to conduct energy.

Actually, Galli didn’t physically visit Tunguska until 1991. When he did, he learned that the trees picked up “unusually high levels of elements like copper, gold, and nickel”. (I am fairly sure this only applies to trees around in 1908 which got showered with bits of exploding rock.) At least one of these essential minerals can be introduced to your body by drinking Goldschläger, which is probably cheaper.

2000-2005 … From among thousands of plants reborn from the ashes of Tunguska, scientists identify the ten most concentrated with therapeutic properties.

…the visitors and attendants might also be offered groaning cake, groaning pie, groaning bread or groaning cheese, depending on local tradition. In some areas a groaning cake would be offered to the groaning woman (as if she would be interested!)…. Another variation of tradition was that when the woman was going to be ‘churched’ after the birth (to be ceremonially ‘cleansed’ and welcomed back to the flock) she carried a piece of the groaning cake to give to the first person that she met along the way.

I’m not actually going to throw this party while I’m in labor, of course. Not only is that probably a breach of etiquette, but really, the last thing on my mind would be “has everybody had enough cake”? But it’d be great fun to be thrown one, perhaps a few days after the kid arrives. Better than a baby shower in which you’re given goofy, cute, useless chachkes — instead you get cake/pie/cheese and all the women can complain about childbirth!

And writing that, I realize that female bonding can be incredibly weird…

Thanks to The Old Foodie for the inspiration

[See post to watch Flash video]

One thing they mention is that you’re supposed to travel in the passing lane(s) on the interstate, and stay out of the entry lane (unless entering or exiting). I’m going to have to watch more drivers safety films, because I always learned to stay as far right as possible unless you’re passing. Or, this might simply be advice more applicable to places like Chicago (where I think this was filmed) where on-ramps are found every half-mile, rather than places where I grew up like Middle O’Nowhere, Ohio, which have ten mile stretches between exits.

DeBeers, which controls the vast majority of diamond sourcing around the world, has spent the last several decades bottlenecking the diamond trade to create an artificial global sense of diamond scarcity and thereby to inflate prices…. Truly: who would buy these rocks at these prices if they knew just how common they were, when there are adequate, in some cases identical, substitutes that are less pricey? Why?

It’s all about PR. Mikimoto, cultured pearl king, didn’t become a success by announcing, “Hey, look at this, I’ve got a manufactured pearl,” and then sit back while “real” pearl sellers touted theirs as better because they were natural. He plastered them everywhere. He sewed them by the thousands onto gowns worn by celebrities. He made fabulous jewelry worn by celebrities. He made a Liberty Bell replica for the 1926 World’s Fair coated in, guess what, cultured pearls. He even destroyed, with great public fanfare, pearls made by his oyster farms which didn’t meet quality standards — showing just how many pearls he had and just how high his standards for beauty and perfection were. He also was quite canny to call them cultured pearls instead of manufactured, manmade, or any less-fancy word.

If today’s diamond makers want to have any chance of challenging the international diamond cartel, they need to get a good marketing team together to combat the vast publicity power of the diamond miners. Of course, they could always specifically target the nerd market. The only reason I’ve got a real diamond on my engagement ring is that it’s an antique, passed on to my husband by his grandmother. Otherwise I’d probably be happier with a manufactured diamond, because I’m weird like that and like technological sciency stuff. Besides…

they can also be cultured in different shapes–like flat, as for a window of a spaceship.

Who wouldn’t want diamond windows in their house? (Or diamond windows in their hydrogen-powered car, while I’m fantasizing…)

Men wanted just one thing from her.

Wonder what that one thing was. Dance lessons? Stock tips? Cookie recipes? The secret to how she keeps that dress from falling off?