Metafrog - The Anti-Blog

OMENICA GOLD RUSH: There's Gold in them thar British Columbian hills

2007-11-29T14:10:00.000-08:00

I'm not even going to bother with this blog anymore. After a year writing about random stuff, but even though I've learned a lot, too often it's just not interesting.

I wish I got more history articles, instead of a stubby article about a c-movie actress or a 3rd tier athlete in a sport i don't care about.

I'm not sure if anyone has actually read this blog other than a couple of folks I talked to about it almost a year ago. One thought experiment that I have long had is what if you were on a desert island by yourself, would you do anything creative, other than make a shelter for yourself? I'm guessing that no one would, because creation beyond the necessary is just a form of communication. In fact, many might even fail to create something practical enough to sustain themselves against the elements, if they knew they would never see another person. They might think, what's the point in living. I don't think all would -- some would relate with the animals around them. But if there were no animals, and yet someone still had the capacity to feed themselves, i think they would probably try to swim off the island, or die trying.

FEAR LIATH: the panic inducing giant of Scottish mountain Ben MacDhui

2007-10-04T13:28:00.000-07:00

One day in 1890, world reknowned British chemist and mountaineer J. Norman Collie climbed the 2nd highest peak in the British Isles, Ben MacDhui. Near the summit, he experienced a terrible feeling of panic, as he was convinced that he was hearing someone walking behind him, though he had come up the summit alone -- and the sound of these footsteps in the snow were as if a creature some two or three times his size were following close behind him. He descended from the top as fast as he could, but couldn't get a good look at what was behind him because of a heavy grey mist.

Or so Collie recounted to a group of Mountaineers some 35 years later. Others have also reported feelings of panic, and a sense of being chased by a giant grey man, when they approached the peak of Ben MacDhui. So began the legend of Am Fear Liath Mòr, or The Big Grey Man of Ben Macdhui.

One scientific explanation for this phemenon is that the climbers are experiencing a sense of being overwhelmed by the enormity of nature, next to which they feel their own isolation and mortality, a feeling enhanced by their exhaustion. Also that the climbers may have seen a Brocken Spectre, which is an optical illusion whereby someone looking into mist sees a magnified version of their own shadow, which they mistook for a giant creature.

The photo is of the Cairn at the peak of Ben MacDhui, taken by Oliver Mills.

ECUMENICAL SOMETHING OR OTHER

2007-09-28T14:08:00.000-07:00

I botched this one, it was a really obscure theology stub that came up a couple of weeks ago, and it was so unmemorable that I can't even find it now. It's got to be still in the browser history on my wife's computer, but I don't care to go back to it now.

But to summarize, it was about a certain group of people -- theologians and heads of different American Catholic and a few Protestant church leaders, who together agreed on a standard for what scripture would be part of the church program at a given year. This standard wasn't adopted by all churches, but it's a very common standard among catholic churches, and at least used as a guidline by many protestant churches. It's sort of a recipe book of 1 part old testament, a psalm or letter, then alternate years reading from one of the 4 main gospels, and one or two other things and that would be the whole service.

This was necessary to revise after the 2nd vatican council in the 60s, a reshuffling of what they were going to preach was required and that's what this council, over a period of years in the 70s, accomplished.

ARBOR LAKE: a well off characterless new suburb of Calgary

2007-09-14T14:36:00.000-07:00

Calgary is in the midst of an economic boom, it being the capital city of the resource rich Canadian provice of Alberta. It may get cold, but there's skiing and that kind of thing. But all the folks moving in need a place to live, and Arbor Lake, on the northwestern outskirts of the city (bounded by highways with names that sound far more quaint than they are, Nose Hill Drive and Stony Trail), was founded in 1991 for this purpose. The median income was over $70,000 in 2000, not bad at all. A full quarter are immigrants -- from England, Poland, France and a few other places (Americans are #7 on the list I think).

To counter the bordom of suburban life some Arbor Lake young men (maybe a woman in there too somewhere) started an artistic /social collective, the Arbor Lake Sghool. While none of the works that I came across seemed at all thought provoking, it seems like a good idea. One thing that is certainly original is the word 'sgool', google it and you'll find the link at the top, the rest is random gibberish.

LIST OF OKLAHOMA SOONERS MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIPS: a list that speaks for itself

2007-08-23T13:49:00.000-07:00

The Oklahoma Sooners, that is, the basketball team that goes by the team name of Sooners, of the University of Oklahoma based in the central city of Norman, have requited themselves very well over the decades, winning 9 NCAA championship titles over the decades. They do have a large pool of students to draw from (about 30,000 students enrolled at a time), though really basketball players are recruited for the school while in high school on the basis of their proven abilities with a basketball. This is not to say that the school itself doesn't have a distinguished academic record, it graduates the most per capital National Merit Scholars, and is in the top five schools for how many Rhodes scholars it graduates. Plus it has a good record for the amount of research is published from the School.

Good for them, I wouldn't want to be stuck in Oklahoma, but at least they've got that school going for them. Actually I have known one or two smart people from OK. And the Flaming Lips came from Oklahoma. Still, without having visited, I know the place is geographically flat, like my native Illinois, which is a big minus. And it's sad to think of all the Native Americans that were forced to move there in the 19th century, including the Cherokee -- who were cheated out of their land in Georgia, their treaty with the government broken under Andrew Jackson's administration, even though they had their own cities and written language. (well, they had their own slaves too, which they brought with them -- history is a complicated thing).

STEVE TORREALBA: former major league baseball player from Venezuela

2007-08-10T13:07:00.000-07:00

Steve Torrealba was born in Venezuela in 1978, but like his father he played major league baseball in the United States. Given that he was in the Army reserve program while he attended the University of Albany, we might wonder whether he had to serve in Iraq. Given that he was 26 when the was started, it seems a possibility. We know that in the picture above from the Albany ROTC website, he had already achieved the rank of Captain (Lieutenant would be the first rank someone would achieve while still in College, I believe -- this being entry level rank for a commissioned officer). Maybe his service in Iraq is the reason that Cpt. Torrealba only played two seasons -- 2001 and 2002 -- for the Atlanta Braves, and there ended his career in baseball. I wonder if Cpt. Torrealba even could have been a casualty of the Iraq war -- injured or killed? But I have no idea, for all I know he went back to Venezuela.

But, wait a second -- here on the web I see Steve Torrealba played for the Cincinnati Reds in 2006. He's probably still in baseball now! Well, that was a relief.

I guess you can't trust everything you read in Wikipedia. I hope they don't sent him back to Iraq, though, that was a close call!

SCALENUS POSTERIOR: neck muscle helpful in head-tilting and breathing

2007-07-26T10:53:00.000-07:00

The Scalenus Posterior is one of three Scalenus muscles (the s. anterior, the s. medius being the other two). It is the most deeply seated of these muscles, that is, it's overlapped by the others and would be impossible to find by flexing your neck muscles. But if you pulled it, you would not be able to tilt your head to the same side, or only with pain and difficulty. Also, breathing would perhaps be just a tad more labored and you'd feel it with every breath, as the muscle is attached to your second highest rib at one end (the other end is attached to the knobs coming off your lowest two or three vertebra in the back of your neck).

ATHANUR: A Tiny Tamil Town in India

2007-07-19T14:12:00.000-07:00

ATHANUR is a town of a mere 9,000 or so residents (according to a 2001 census), which is pretty small for an Indian town I imagine. It is a 'panchayat' town, which is part of a kind of government conceived by Mohandas Ghandi during the days of British Rule. The idea was to have autonomous power at the local level by officials appointed by a council who would be attentive to the issues that are relevant to that particular area. At the village level, these officals number between 7 and 31. The Caste system prevented the wide adoption of this system in many parts of India, but in some areas it was implemented starting in the 50s and 60s, and given official status in the Indian Constitution in 1993.

Only 55% of Anarthur's residents are literate, lower than the national average. There are 2% more males than females, possibly owing to the culture and poverty of the people in the area -- men can work more, women are a liability because it is necessary to provide them with a dowery when married, and then they are incorporated into the new family and do not support the parents any longer. That is, there is female infanticide.

Pictured is the Indian State of Tamil Nadu and its districts.

FOREST ECOLOGY: The study of patterns in the lives of the world's largest living beings

2007-07-12T14:13:00.000-07:00

Forests are really important, as we hear more and more these days. Forest Ecology is a field that helps us understand them better, by understanding certain patterns of how they live, interact with each other and their surrounding environment.

Forests are so important to life on earth because they represent a huge amount of biomass, and are have enormous amounts of water and potential energy. We say potential energy, because their kinetic energy is expressed mostly in their growth, which takes place over centuries or longer. But, they have the potential, when acted upon by outside forces, of sudden bursts of activity -- like when a tree falls, or gets burned in a forest fire. And their presence affects the weather, usually exerting a moderating influence on what otherwise would be extreme wind and percipitation -- this is also due to their being huge repositories of water, and their soaking up carbon dioxide and producing oxygen.

Aspen trees form in colonies that have linked roots, so they are really part of the same organism. The Pando colony in Utah may be the oldest (80,000 plus years), largest, and it certainly seems to be the heaviest living organism.

GAD: an ancient Semitic diety of good fortune

2007-06-22T11:11:00.000-07:00

GAD was one of at least two gods worshipped by the Jews while they were staying in Babylon in addition to their main God (the other one being Meni, the God of fate). Its not necessarily true that they all worshipped him, but this was a very popular deity amonst non-Jews in the area too, and since he was the God of Fortune, it probably seemed like a wise thing to worship him becase they really wanted fortune to smile on them so they could get back to Israel, from which most of the Jews were forced to leave by the Babylonian King Nebuchadrezzar in the 6th Century BCE. Most of us would have thought the most salient aspect of Judaism was monotheism, but this clearly isn't how it started out, or if it did there were many centuries of lapsing back into polytheism. This is why Prophets kept showing up, like Ezekiel and Elijah, to condemn Jews for having lapsed into idolatry. But even these chastisements have to be understood in the context of the many edits that the books that comprise the Bible/Torah, and that in the original they might have had references to deities like Gad. In Isaiah, as a matter of fact, Gad and Meni are mentioned as being deities worshipped by Israelites, but this part is usually left out of most Bible translations. Moses of course was supposed to have gone up to mount Sinai and received the ten commandments from God, and the very first one, the most important, was that the Lord is the only god and there shouldn't be any others worshipped. But this part was surely written after the worship of Gad, the whole book of Exodus may have been written after the events of the Babylonian captivity.

It's also interesting to note that one of the lost tribes of the Israelites was named Gad -- and that these folks were condemned as Israel's enemy in the books of Kings and Samuel. Perhaps they were worshippers of Gad after the return of the Israelites from the last Baylonian captivity (when Cyrus of Persia conquered Babylon and let them come back), whereas the others went whole hog back to monotheism.

Another way that traces of Gad survive even to this day is with my Grandmother, who on occasion has been known to exlaim, "Oh, my Gad!"

BURLINGAME: a 19th century American diplomat, a treaty and a couple of cities named after him, a victim of 9/11, his sister, a high school, an author

2007-06-20T18:25:00.000-07:00

Anson Burlingame was born in 1820 and died in 1970, and is most famous for being the US minister (a 19th century equivalent of ambassador I think) to China during the Lincoln administration, and author The Burlingame Treaty, which gave China most favored nation status for trading and gave the Chinese many of the same rights of immigration and status that were enjoyed by some of the European powers. He served from 1961 until his death, he managed to be in China during the civil war. That must have been weird for him. Burlingame had, before serving the newly formed Republican party, been a Free Soiler and then a Know Nothing in the House of Representatives. These terms are only relevant to the time in which he was living, but had to do with the divisions between the Democrats and the other parties that led to the Civil War. Basically the Democrats were the party of Slave owning Southern Aristocrats, and they were quite intent on extending slavery to the new territories to the West, -- though this would have meant expanding their influence and power in Washington as well and giving them control over the Senate and possibly the House as well. Different political forces were coalescing to oppose the Democrats influence, which had been felt since Andrew Jackson's polarizing Presidential terms 1829-37. The Fee Soilers had a platform of wanting to open up the West to settlement through incentives, while forbidding the expansion of Slavery. Not because they wanted Slavery to be abolished necessarily, and not all of them were abolitionists, nor were all abolitionists not racists necessarily either. Eventually these forces, the Free Soilers, Know Nothings and others came together to form the new Republican party, and when they managed to get a president elected -- Lincoln -- the result was Southern succession and the Civil War.

Charles Burlingame was the Pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which was flown into the Pentagon on Septeber 11, 2001. His Sister Debra is a reactionary attorney who has written columns for the Wall Street Journal and who was instrumental in sinking the proposed International Freedom Center at the World Trade Center site. The Center was supposed to be a museum about various genocides and crimes against humanity through history; she used her influence along with other ignorant fire breathers to stop the center being built because she said the center had nothing to do with crimes against humanity in general; this was unique and somehow the center was seen as celebrating the terrorists.

Jeff Burlingame is a music PR guy and writer, he wrote a well regarded biography of Kurt Cobain.

Burlingame High School is in Burlingame, California, a very wealthy town near San Francisco. The three children of Kathryn Crosby Grant (blogged about by myself a couple of months ago) went there.

SASHA ALEXANDER: Another Los Angeles Actor of Moderate Fame

2007-06-15T11:27:00.000-07:00

Being that my blog subjects are chosen randomly, I do end up with a lot of short blogs about minor celebrities or sports people who I had never heard of, and who nevertheless about whom I am compelled wax poetic. Oh Sasha Alexander, a TV star many would recognize. But I haven't lived in a place with TV reception for almost 10 years now, and I haven't had the chance to catch any of the shows that you appeared in. Apparently you had a major role in the tv series NCIS, which sounds like a copycat show of CSI, the twist being that you were part of a team of investigators from the Navy instead of a special investigative division of the police.
Congratulations on the birth of your daughter Lucia, I always liked that name. That's pretty cool that your stepmama is Sophia Loren, or will be whenever you and Lucia's father do get married. Hey, you're living in fornication, as the born again owner of a pet store once told my (now) wife.

PRISMATOID: A shape beloved of geometers and industrial designers

2007-06-08T12:23:00.000-07:00

A Prismatoid is a polyhedron where all the vertices lie in 2 planes. So this could be a pyramid, or so many other things. If the two planes have the same number of vertices then it is a prismoid, a subset of prismatoid.

The simplest prismatoid you could have would be a 3 sided pyramid --a single vertex on one plane and 3 on another. the next simplest would be a wedge, 2 vertices on one plane and 3 on the other. The 3rd most would be 3 on each plane, which is also the simplest prismoid you could create.

COLLEGE MISERICORDIA: A pretty O.K. Catholic college in Pennsylvania

2007-05-31T12:53:00.000-07:00

The website of this college makes me not nostalgic for my college days. It really doesn't seem like my kind of place, but in its favor, it places something like 53rd in the top 176 colleges of its class according to some college survey, according to them. Also in its favor, when you check out their total room and board it only comes out to about $14,000, which is less than half what most small colleges will run you nowadays. But maybe it shouldn't be compared with those liberal arts colleges, its really not quite the same -- my college didn't offer nursing classes for instance, and this one doesn't offer Multicultural or, this is a new one i've been hearing about, Fat Studies. Also the student profiles they put up there are, well, couldn't they have found more attractive students? It's just marketing, but if this college doesn't sell itself so well, then is that supposed to inspire me with confidence about what it will do for me as a potential student?

One thing they do for their students is guarantee them they will get a position in their chosen field within 6 years or else they will give them an internship in it. But if after 6 years of trying all you can get is an internship, that's pretty sad. The idea is depressing, I'm glad my 20s are in the past.

HYBOTIDAE: Little flies, aren't bloodsuckers, you probably never notice 'em

2007-05-30T08:29:00.001-07:00

Hybotidae, or Dancing Flies, are a family within the order Diptera, or True Flies. There are so many different classifications within the order Diptera that there is no real agreement as to how to do it amongst entymologists; there are just too many 'infraorders' and 'superfamilys' with shared characteristics. And tons of undiscovered species, no doubt -- flies are everywhere, as we know. However, there are two distinct agreed upon suborders -- Nematocera, which are full of misquitoes, blackflies and other bloodsuckers plus gnats, and Brachycera, which includes the Hybotidae. Anyway, none of the species in the Hybotidae family do any bloodsucking and seem pretty harmless as far as I can tell, and they're not big, so you probably will never even take note of them beyond reading this post.

REBBENA: A South Eastern Northern Central Indian Sub-Sub-Sub division

2007-05-24T09:42:00.000-07:00

Rebbena is a Mandal in the Indian State of Andhra Pradesh, in the Eastern part of South India (Capital: Hydrabad). The main language of this Indian State is Telugu, and in Telugu this is the name of the state: ఆంధ్ర ప్రదేశ్ (pretty, no?). 90% of the people in the State are Hindus, most of the rest are Muslims and speak Urdu -- but the percentage is probably somewhat higher in Rebbena, being that this particular Mandal is located in the northmost District of Andhal Pradesh, Andilabad, and the Muslims came down from the north in the 10th century but never made it as far as the most southernly State, Tamil Nadu (the only part of India not conquered at any point by Muslims). Pictured above is Andilabad, the #40 area in the center eastern part is Rebbena. It's probably a fairly poor district, the main industry is farming, with some textiles, leather production, and a smattering of others.

If you know more about Rebbena, you can add your own comments on this site that interfaces with Google Maps, called Wikimapia.

THUNDERPUSS: a couple of dj's who rearranged beats of music industry moneymakers to fuel alcohol and sex industry niches

2007-05-18T11:44:00.000-07:00

When one of the perfomers that a record company heavily promotes has a chart topping single, the typical thing to do is to make several mixes of the track to suit different radio formats -- boost the vocals here, add some strings there, or adjust certain sounds for easier listening or for radio stations that program what is still blandly and fairly meaninglessly referred to as 'rock'.

But a record company will also often hire a dj to make an extended dance remix. These remixes are bought and used for private public spaces, where the familiarity of the music track plus the heavier beats will make people want to dance, drink, and have sex.

The name of this dj duo, Thunderpuss, is suggestive of at least two of the aforementioned industry uses of dance remixes. As for the dj's themselves, who no longer work together or under this name, they continue to work as dj's at parties and are paid for their production and mixing work on records. But as the major record labels have been in freefall for a while, the record work is no doubt less lucrative, and they have to rely on their dj skills more -- though they're probably not hurting too bad.

CHEVRON - The original abstraction

2007-05-17T11:46:00.000-07:00

A chevron is a straight or slightly curved line bent in the middle at approximately ninety degrees. We see these all over the place -- one such place is on military uniforms. A private has one of these on their sleeves, a corporal has two, and a Sargeant has three. They are a common feature on flags -- the flag depicted is the flag of the North American Vexilogical Association; other Vexilogical organizations also favor the chevron. Vexillology is the study of flags, thus the chevron is a flag lover's ideal, and this is a flag of flags.

The chevron it is in fact one of the very first abstract symbols ever. The Soviet experimental filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein wrote an essay comparing the language of film montage to Chinese pictograms (which are known to be at least 4,000 years old), in which he noted that a chevron was symbolic of 'house', a wavy line of 'woman', but when you put the chevron over the wavy line the word became 'tranquility'. Thus to have a home and a woman was to live in tranquility.

CAROLINA PASCUAL: Spanish gymnast wins medal, retires at 17

2007-05-14T12:55:00.000-07:00

Rhythmic gymnasts are seperated into two divisions by the World Gymnastics Federation -- those under 16 and those over. This must be because once you hit 16 you just aren't as good any more, not as short and spry and have a reduced elasticity -- and your really past it by the time you've hit 17, which is why Carolina Pascual quit at that age and started coaching.

I noticed in the Wikipedia entry for rhythmic gymnastics, someone snuck a little something at the end of the main description: ' u is a bitch nigga '. I don't know how long that edit will survive Wikipedia's roving editors, this could be a test for them.

BATTLE OF GETTYSBURGH, FIRST DAY -- things look bad for the Union, but the next day Lee's blunder will lose the war for the Confederates

2007-05-10T11:08:00.000-07:00

The Battle of Gettysburgh wasn't planned, it started when confederate general Henry Heth went looking for some shoes for his troops, during the campaign where the armies of the South were supposed to be battering places in the North to get them to give up the war. At this point, the war could have gone either way, and despite the built-in advantage that the North had in being more industrialized than the South, the South had overall won more engagements and had better leadership. But this was the first day of the 3-day battle that would destroy such a large part of General Robert. E. Lee's fighting force that it was to spell the beginning of the end of the whole Confederate war effort. And the moment of truth was during Day 2, a charge through Union artillery on three sides known as "Pickett's Charge," which despite all the successes owing the Lee's great strategic skills, this blunder was all his, as he acknowledged as the Confederate forces retreated on the 3rd day of the battle.

But in this first day, things were looking better for the Confederates than the Union army. The Rebels were able to outflank the Union armies in several areas, and by midday the Union was retreating in disarray through the town of Gettysburgh, seeking higher ground beyond the town. They did get there, and that the Confederate Generals did not prevent them or see it through all the way would be something they would pay for the next day. General Heth was one of the casualties that day; he was struck in the head by a bullet -- though his life was saved because his hat, too big for his head, was stuffed with paper and somehow the bullet only knocked him out for 24 hours. But these were crucial hours. On the Union side General John F. Reynolds, one of the most senior and respected Union Generals, was hit by a bullet in the back of the neck, knocked of his horse and died. In this first day, about there were about 9,000 union casualties (killed, wounded and missing) and about 6,000 confederate casualties. By the end of the three day battle the totals were around 23,000 each.

MARK GODDARD: former racing driver now managing third-tier racing organization in Asia

2007-04-19T09:18:00.000-07:00

MARK GODDARD is the managing director of the Asian Forumula Three Corporation, which is based in Manila in the Philippines. Though he is British, there are a lot of Brits involved in the Asian racing scene, probably because it's a pretty new thing to have competitive racing events in Asia, and there are so many British expats living in Australia. Also, Asia means opportunities that don't exist for many drivers in Britain, as the cost of having a team in Asia is a fraction of what it would cost in Britain (about $160,000 US as opposed to the $800,000 it would cost in Britain).

F3 is for newer drivers, by winning these races a driver can work their way up to the Formula One racing that gets the big audiences and sponsorship money.

The Asian Formula Three Corporation are eight racing teams, including "Team Goddard", of which Mark Goddard is the Team Principal. Thus he probably traveled with his team to Zuhai China for the first 3 rounds in January, to Albert Park Australia in March, and I think the team isn't advancing farther than that this year but if they did they would go to Sentul Indonesia in May and finally back to Zuhai China in July.

Mr. Goddard never got that far as a driver, his best showing was finishing 3rd in the B-series in British F3. But was apparently a roomate of former worldclass F1 driving Eddie Irvine, who even was able to win with cars designed by overrated Jaguar, while that company briefly experimented with F1 racing. Irvine is now the fifth richest person in northern Ireland.

SCID: a severe congenital disease, a chess database, a database using meta-application, a diagnostic procedure, and an ID# from fiber optic technology

2007-04-17T13:38:00.000-07:00

SEVERE COMBINED IMMUNODEFICIENCY is one kind of SCID -- being born without an effective immune system. This is what David Vetter, the original Bubble Boy, suffered from, forcing him to live his short life in a bubble, venturing out a couple of times in a suit made by NASA. Nowadays someone born with a SCID doesn't have to live in a sanitized bubble, they can give them bone marrow transplants.

SHANE'S CHESS INFORMATION DATABASE is another SCID. It is a nice way of gathering many different chess games played by chess masters and comparing them. It is available for Unix, Linux, Windows and Mac operating systems. It is free and open source -- though apparently some of the code was stolen from a similar application, ChessDB.

STRUCTURED CLINICAL INTERVIEWS FOR DSM-IV (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) is another SCID. This is a process developed for researchers to obtain a diagnosis of what mental disorders someone they are interviewing has. DSM-IV is the major classification system used across the United States, and its classifications are recognized by Psychologists, Biologists, Sociologists and other Ologists.

SOURCE CODE IN DATABASE is an IDE, or Integrated Development Environment (an application made for the development of other applications) that uses a database to store bundles of pre-packaged code for the coder who uses it.

Finally, SCID is a SONET CARRIER IDENTIFICATION, SONET being the protocol by which data is decoded, through pulses of light carried on fiber optic cable, and the carrier (probably) being a telecom. For instance, Verizon will provide you with some SCID codes if you buy service from them using SONET.

HUGO HERGESELL: a scientist tests the atmosphere for the air war

2007-04-14T00:49:00.000-07:00

Hugo Hergesell was a German meteorologist born in 1859 in Bromberg in Prussia, which is and was also called Bydgoszcz to the Poles. The Teutonic Knights took it briefly in the 14th century, and then Prussia took it in the first division of Poland in 1772. It had been split between the powers of Prussia, Russia, and Austria in an agreement in order to maintain the balance of power. Frederick The Great treated his new subjects well, unlike what would happen to them later when Hitler's Wehrmacht were to annex the place in 1938.

Hergesell became a professor of meteorology at the University of Strasbourg, the capital of another historically contentious territory, Alsace (taken by Germany in 1871, then reclaimed by France after WWI, and taken again by Germany in WWII, now again part of France). He conducted many of the first important research on the atmosphere using balloons, manned and unmanned, in the latter part of the 19th century and early 20th century. This research was both a product of and integral to the development of aviation technology. This may be why he was so close with Kaiser Wilhelm, the agressive militaristic leader of the German state, and why they went on trips together in the years preceding WWI. In an expedition to Tenerife, an Island posession of Spain off of the West coast of Africa (conveniently located between Germany and its German colonies), Hergesell helped set up weather stations donated by the Kaiser himself.

In 1934, Hergesell was awarded the Third Reich's medal for German achiever's, the Eagle Cross, for his contributions to Science and Avaiation -- probably pinned on his chest by Adolf Hitler himself, as was usually done. Hergesell died in 1938 at the outbreak of the Second World War.

THE SOUTH-WEST AFRICA CAMPAIGN: Brits order Boers to kick Germans out of their favorite African colony

2007-04-12T13:06:00.000-07:00

One of the first actions taken by the British Empire in Africa after hostilities had broken out in World War I was to get their South African client government to attack the German's South West African colony, in the area now known as Namibia. In August 1914 Louis Botha, the Prime Minister of modern South Africa's predecessor nation, The Union of South Africa, said he could send some troops to France. London asked him if he could invade German South West Africa instead, and Botha gave the order to invade to his armed forces.

However, this wasn't what many of his Generals or other soldiers of the Boers wanted to do. Only 12 years before, the Boers had been at war with Britain, and Britain had been responsible for a terrible scorched earth campaign against the Boers, finally sending tens of thousands of them to concentration camps (this is where the name actually comes from, they were concentrated in small areas). Some 27,000 whites and 14,000 blacks or more died of starvation and disease. Other blacks, maybe as many as 600,000 or so, were killed by the Boers during this time, as the oppressive Boers thought the Blacks were allying or might ally with the British. Well that's off the point, the real issue was that Germany had been their ally during this 'Second Boer War' of 1899-1902. Many of the Boers had escaped across the border and never signed the peace agreement and fealty to the British government that Britain had made the Boers sign as a condition of peace after defeating them.

And so it was that when the call to arms came, some Boer Generals were conspiring together to protest, resign, rebel -- some combination of these. But what really set off the Maritz rebellion was the death of Koos de la Ray, General and war hero of the Second Boer War, when the car he was riding in was gunned down after riding through a government roadblock. The driver probably thought the government set up the roadblock to arrest the General, who was on his way to meet up with other conspiring war leaders opposed to the British. In reality the roadblock was set up to stop a group of murderous bandits known as the Foster Gang. His death on September 15, 1914 triggered the rebellion -- which was quashed pretty quickly by the Union of SA forces, who stayed true to their oath to the British Government.

The Boers weren't kind to the indiginous people of South Africa, as we know. But the Germans who they had kicked out by 1915 were actually worse. The first Genocide of the 20th century was not the Armenian genocide, as I suggested in an earlier post. It was actually the attempted German extermination of the Herero and Nama peoples -- specifically singled out for their race and identity for destruction, after they rebelled against the German colonists (The Germans had been enslaving their people to work on farms and in diamond mines, expropriating their land and settling the area). By 1907 there were only a small fraction of their original population left.

TRANSMEDIALE: Berlin avante garde music festival too cool for the U.S.

2007-04-09T09:42:00.000-07:00

Transmediale is a festival held in the Club Transmediale since 2001, which receives a major grant from the German government to invite music and video artists from around the world for a several weeks avante garde noise and video extravaganza.

The U.S. government doesn't put up money for this kind of thing. But a much smaller percentage of the U.S. population is into this kind of art. Now if the government did fund it, then there would be an event which would get a bigger audience for it. But I can only imagine it really working out in New York City. And even though New York City is New York City, it's still not Berlin, which really specializes in this kind of hipster avante garde scene. I can imagine this festival happening in Williamsburg Brooklyn -- and attracting a lot of Germans, especially.