Founding of The Bulletin

1880 Australia: The first issue of The Bulletin was published. The magazine was founded by two journalists, JF Archibald (pictured) and John Haynes. The Bulletin 's literary editor, AG Stephens, had a great deal of influence on the 'Bulletin school' ('Bully' writer Henry Lawson, one of Stephens's 'finds', thought him an insufferable snob). A very influential editor was WH Traill.

Among the many well-known contributors were the writers Banjo Paterson, George Black, Edwin Brady, Bernard O'Dowd, Joseph Furphy (Tom Collins), Miles Franklin, Katharine Susannah Prichard, Mary Gilmore, George Gordon McCrae, Roderic Quinn and Vance and Nettie Palmer, the cartoonists Livingston Hopkins ('Hop), William Macleod and David Low, and the artist and novelist Norman Lindsay. The magazine operated in Reiby Lane, off Pitt Street, Sydney.

Categories: australia, history, henry-lawson, australian-poetry, australian-literature, poetry, literature, bush-poetry

Norman Mailer

1923 Norman Mailer (d. November 10, 2007), American novelist (Ancient Evenings; The Naked and the Dead) and journalist. In 1955, Mailer co-founded The Village Voice, and he was editor of Dissent from 1954 until 1963. He was imprisoned in 1967 for his role in demonstrations against the war in Vietnam. He was president of the US Chapter of International PEN, the fellowship of writers, from 1984 to 1986.

Like Truman Capote, Mailer helped bring about the non-fiction novel. In the 1960s and '70s he developed a form of journalism, that combines actual events, autobiography, and political commentary, and adds the richness of the novel.

Adele Morales Mailer called her husband a "faggot" when he was drunk and stoned at 4 am at a party to launch his mayoral campaign, whereupon Mailer stabbed her twice with a penknife, nearly killing her. It has been said that feminist Kate Millett coined the phase 'male chauvinist pig' in reference to Mailer ...

Categories: author, literature, american-literature, biography, feminism

Mind Control: America's Secret War

Mind Control: America's Secret War (Google Video, at http://tinyurl.com/y9z5fwy) is a chilling and fascinating 43-minute documentary on MKULTRA and other programs that used psychedelics, deep sleep, sensory deprivation and other techniques on American citizens during the Cold War as late as the 1970s.

Categories: cia, cold-war, science, psychology, disinformation, entheogen, psychiatry, military, ussr, usa

A talk in Bellingen on sustainability

The Bellingen Environment Centre is organising a discussing forum with
Giselle Wilkinson from Sustainable Living Foundation @:

Uniting Church Hall Bellingen

Monday 01/02/10 at 6:30 PM. (This Monday)

Giselle is a leading advocate for sustainable living and have been involvedin the movement for more than 20 years.

Hope to see you there and spread the word please.

Enquiry: 6655 8770

Categories: bellingen, sustainability, community

The greatest nautical disaster in history

1945 The sinking of the KdF Ship Wilhelm Gustloff

What was the greatest maritime disaster in history? The Titanic? The Lusitania? In fact, the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff makes these tragedies look tiny by comparison. Perhaps six or seven times as many people died in this sinking as in either of the more famous tragedies -- 9,372 as estimated by Discovery Channel ...

Categories: nautical, disaster, germany, wwII

Vale Howard Zinn

"Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam... died of a heart attack today in Santa Monica, Calif, where he was traveling, his family said. He was 87.

"'His writings have changed the consciousness of a generation, and helped open new paths to understanding and its crucial meaning for our lives,' Noam Chomsky, the left-wing activist and MIT professor, once wrote of Dr. Zinn. 'When action has been called for, one could always be confident that he would be on the front lines, an example and trustworthy guide.'

"For Dr. Zinn, activism was a natural extension of the revisionist brand of history he taught. Dr. Zinn’s best-known book, 'A People’s History of the United States' (1980), had for its heroes not the Founding Fathers - many of them slaveholders and deeply attached to the status quo, as Dr. Zinn was quick to point out - but rather the farmers of Shays' Rebellion and the union organizers of the 1930s ..."
AlterNet

Categories: progressive, usa, biography, history, labor-history

Haiti tragedy is not in a political vacuum

Natural disasters always loom larger in places that have been forced into poverty by rich nations. I trust that most Wilson's Blogmanac readers are aware of the machinations of the Bush and Clinton regimes that led to such poverty in Haiti, and then to the worst natural disaster in the Western Hemisphere. Still, watch this brief video for a reminder, because we should never forget: http://tinyurl.com/yz92ry7

Categories: haiti, earthquake, natural-disaster, imf, wto, usa, corporations

Vale Ron Seach

On Christmas Day, local author Ron Seach kindly gave me a copy of his interesting new collection of memoirs, 'True Short Stories from One Lifetime'. As I was putting pen to paper to congratulate him on many interesting tales, I learned that my fellow member of Nitewriters had died. Ron's funeral will be held at the Hogbin Drive Crematorium, Coffs Harbour, on Monday, February 1, at 1 pm.

The case of the talking carp

According to two fish-cutters at the New Square (30 miles north of Manhattan, New York) Fish Market, on this day in 2003 they were about the slaughter a 20-pound carp to make into gefilte fish for Sabbath dinner, when it suddenly began shouting apocalyptic warnings in Hebrew.

At 4 pm, Zalmen Rosen, a 57-year-old Hasidic father of eleven, and his co-worker, Luis Nivelo, a Gentile who does not understand Hebrew, were about to club the carp on the head when it began yelling "Tzaruch shemirah" and "Hasof bah", which, according to the shop owner, essentially means that everyone must account for themselves because the end is near.

Nivelo was understandably so shocked at the sight of a talking fish that he fell over, then ran into the front of the store screaming: "It's the Devil! The Devil is here!" Not all, however, believe that the talking fish was Satanic ...


Categories: mystery

Richard Dawkins -The Greatest Show on Earth

http://tinyurl.com/ylh4tbt

Categories: evolution, science, dawkins

The first Australia Day

1788 New Holland (now called Australia): The First Fleet landed at Botany Bay, near present-day Sydney and Governor Arthur Phillip took formal possession of the colony of New South Wales in the name of King George III of the United Kingdom.

Following the American Revolution, Britain was deprived of penal colonies and in the 1780s was keeping large numbers of miscreants in various prisons and even on old ships ('hulks'). The discovery (by Captain James Cook) to Britain of the Great South Land, Terra Australis, or New Holland, as Australia was variously named, gave Britain another dumping ground.

January 26 is celebrated as Australia Day, the country's national day.

Captain Phillip wrote in his diary on this day:

In the evening of the 26th, the colours were displayed on shore, and the Governor, with several of his principal officers and others, assembled around the flagstaff, drank the King's health, and success to the settlement, with all the display of form which, on such occasions, is deemed propitious because it enlivens the spirits and fills the imagination with pleasing presages.

Read more about Australia Day at Wilson's Almanac

Categories: australia, calendar-customs, history

The Marias River Massacre

Today in 1870 at the Piegan Indian campsite at Marias River, Montana, USA, occurred "the greatest slaughter of Indians ever made by US troops", as described by Lieutenant Gus Doane. It is also one of the least known.

Doane, under orders from Major Eugene Baker, commanded F Company in the attack. Some 200 Piegans, most of them either elderly or women and children, were killed in and around their homes, which were later burned to the ground along with the many corpses. About 140 captives were turned loose without adequate food and clothing and some of them froze to death trying to walk to Fort Benton, 90 miles away.

General of the Army, William Sherman, deflected a public inquiry and blandly issued a press release denying any guilt, based on the fact that he "preferred to believe" what he was told by his officers.

Categories: indigenous, military, army, usa, history

For God so loved you I'll blow your fucking head off

"The Australian Defence Force is using US-made gunsights with biblical references etched on them as they fight in Afghanistan."
Source

Thanx Baz le Tuff.

Categories: religion, fundamentalism, australia, christianity, war, military, army

FORA.tv

Another excellent website (thanks Mr Peg for the tip) is FORA.tv. The name (pomo undergrad plural of 'forum') makes me reach for a box of Kleenices, but this site is well worth bookmarking. Tagline: "Videos on the People, Issues, and Ideas Changing the Planet".

Categories: video

The World Can't Wait

Today's pick website: "The World Can't Wait organizes people living in the United States to repudiate and stop the fascist direction initiated by the Bush Regime, including: the murderous, unjust and illegitimate occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan; the global 'war of terror' of torture, rendition and spying; and the culture of bigotry, intolerance and greed. This direction cannot and will not be reversed by leaders who tell us to seek common ground with fascists, religious fanatics, and empire. It can only be possible by the people building a community of resistance - an independent mass movement of people - acting in the interests of humanity to stop, and demand prosecution, of these crimes."

Guantanamo, Illinois

"In less than one year in office, Barack Obama has firmly established the continuation of Bush regime domestic, foreign and economic policy."

"A nearly empty prison facility in Thomson, Illinois has been selected as the site to house Guantanamo detainees. Republicans fume and fuss about security threats but never question the premise upon which detainees are still held. Democrats in Illinois love the idea and lobbied hard for the new prison. Governor Pat Quinn had this to say: 'This is an opportunity to dramatically reduce unemployment, create thousands of good-paying jobs, and breathe new economic life into this part of downstate Illinois.'"
Source

Categories: usa, war-on-terror, guantanamo, bush, obama, crime, war-crime

Folklore of St Vincent's Day

Weather magic charm

Remember on St Vincent's Day
If that the sun his beams display,
Be sure to mark his transient beam
Which through the window sheds a gleam;
For 'tis a token bright and clear,
Of prosperous weather all the year.
Traditional English proverb

(Early Witlow grass, Draba verna, is today's plant, dedicated to this saint)

A deacon of Saragossa, or Zaragoza, Spain, as it in now more correctly called, Vincent was martyred circa 304 during the Emperor Diocletian's persecution of Christians.

Imprisoned in Valencia for his faith, and tortured on a gridiron – a story perhaps adapted from the martyrdom of another son of Huesca in Aragon, Spain, St Lawrence -- Vincent, like many early martyrs in the early hagiographic literature, succeeded in converting his jailer. Though he was finally offered release if he would consign Scripture to the fire, Vincent refused.

Vincent is also the patron of bakers, roof-makers, sailors, schoolgirls, tile-makers, roofers, Portugal, vine dressers (because he protects from frost), vinegar makers, vintners, wine growers, wine makers. For no other apparent reason, he is also a patron saint of alcoholics.

Vincent represents a Christianization of the ancient Greek sun god Apollo, whose rites were performed at this time of year to bring warmth back to the frozen land. Consequently, St Vincent and his feast day are associated with fire, just as we noted on January 20 and 21 for the Eve and Night of St Agnes.

This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives, with many more links, at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date (or your birthday) when you're there.

Categories: saint, calendar-customs, folklore, superstition, christianity, religion, deity

Happy birthday Gene Sharp

Today in the Book of Days http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/book_of_days.html we commemorate the 82nd birthday of Professor Gene Sharp, PhD, American academic known for his extensive writings on nonviolence and power. In my opinion one of the world's most important thinkers, he has been called both the 'Machiavelli of nonviolence' and the 'Clausewitz of nonviolent warfare'.

Sharp is a political scientist, professor, and founder of the Albert Einstein Institution, a non-profit organisation which studies and promotes the use of nonviolent action.

Sharp's scholarship has influenced resistance organizations around the world ...

Sharp's best known book, The Politics of Nonviolent Action (1973), provides a pragmatic political analysis of nonviolent action as a method for applying power in a conflict ...

Categories: peace, war, philosophy, non-violence

Love charms of St Agnes

John Keats, in his poem, 'The Eve of St Agnes' (1819), referred to certain love prognostications, but these are not for the eve (January 20), rather for tonight, the night of St Agnes. English antiquary John Aubrey wrote in his Miscellanies of 1696 that on the night of St Agnes you take a row of pins, and pull out every one, one after another. While saying a paternoster ('Our Father', or 'The Lord's Prayer'), stick one of these pins in your sleeve, and you will dream of the person you will marry.

But kids, don't try this at home if you're already married.

Otherwise, "passing into a different country from that of her ordinary residence, and taking her right-leg stocking, she [the maiden looking for a lover - PW] might knit the left garter around it, repeating the rhyme:

"I knit this knot, this knot I knit,
To know the thing I know not yet,
That I may see
The man that shall my husband be,
Not in his best or worst array,
But what he weareth every day;
That I tomorrow may him ken
From among all other men."

Categories: saint, calendar-customs, folklore, uk

Does Haiti have a pact with the devil?

Here is a Christian response to Pat Robertson's notorious claim.

Pioneer of rights for women

1856 Harriot Eaton Stanton Blatch (d. November 20, 1940), American women's rights and peace activist and author (A Woman's Point of View; Some Roads to Peace; Challenging Years). Due to her organizing abilities, 20,000 people marched in the parade down Fifth Avenue in New York in 1914, organized by the Women's Political Union, which she founded.

Blatch worked with her mother Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony in completing their History of Woman Suffrage, contributing a large chapter on Lucy Stone's American Woman Suffrage Association, a rival organization to Elizabeth Cady Stanton's and Susan B Anthony's National Woman Suffrage Association ...

Categories: suffragette, activism, usa

2010 Global Atheist Convention Melbourne, Australia

"The Enlightenment is under threat. So is reason. So is truth. So is science ... We have to devote a significant proportion of our time and resources to defending it from deliberate attack from organized ignorance ..."
Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion

"Presenters will include: Richard Dawkins, Catherine Deveny, Phillip Adams, Taslima Nasrin, Peter Singer, PZ Myers, Dan Barker, Stuart Bechman, Sue-Ann Post, Kylie Sturgess, John Perkins, Tamas Pataki, Max Wallace, Russell Blackford, Ian Robinson, AC Grayling, Robyn Williams, Simon Taylor, NonStampCollector and Craig Reucassel and Julian Morrow (The Chaser). In addition, a panel of women chaired by Maggie Millar will feature Lyn Allison, Tanya Levin, Leslie Cannold and Jane Caro."

Buy your ticket to Secular Sunday - your last chance to share in the excitement of the Global Atheist Convention. Read more here.

Categories: atheism, australia

Australian national anthem

National anthems (and I guess there are 192 of them), are by definition jingoistic and oh, so creepy, but sufficiently rousing to have your manhood shot off for by other teenagers in uniform, I guess. Here's the Aussie one. I was taught the words while at primary school, but in these days of imposed and voluntary Idiocracy, I find that many young Australians have never even heard them. Hmph! So, in order to get dumbed up rather than down, here goes:

Australia's sons let us rejoice,
For we are young and free;
We've golden soil and wealth for toil,
Our home is girt by sea;
Our land abounds in Nature's gifts
Of beauty rich and rare;
In history's page, let every stage
Advance Australia fair!
In joyful strains then let us sing,
"Advance Australia fair!"

When gallant Cook from Albion sail'd,
To trace wide oceans o'er,
True British courage bore him on,
Till he landed on our shore.
Then here he raised Old England's flag,
The standard of the brave;
With all her faults we love her still,
"Britannia rules the wave!"
In joyful strains then let us sing
"Advance Australia fair!"

Beneath our radiant southern Cross,
We'll toil with hearts and hands;
To make this youthful Commonwealth
Renowned of all the lands;
For loyal sons beyond the seas
We've boundless plains to share;
With courage let us all combine
To advance Australia fair.
In joyful strains then let us sing
"Advance Australia fair!"

While other nations of the globe
Behold us from afar,
We'll rise to high renown and shine
Like our glorious southern star;
From England, Scotia, Erin's Isle,
Who come our lot to share,
Let all combine with heart and hand
To advance Australia fair!
In joyful strains then let us sing
"Advance Australia fair!"

Should foreign foe e'er sight our coast,
Or dare a foot to land,
We'll rouse to arms like sires of yore
To guard our native strand;
Britannia then shall surely know,
Beyond wide ocean's roll,
Her sons in fair Australia's land
Still keep a British soul.
In joyful strains then let us sing
"Advance Australia fair!"

This version is probably as good,or gut-wretchingly creepy, as you'll get:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iGNhgMd6uM

Categories: australia, music, jingoism

$708 billion is not enough for Obama's wars

"The Obama administration plans to ask Congress for an extra $33 billion to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to an Associated Press report.

"The $33 billion would be on top of a record request for $708 billion for the Defense Department next year.

"According to the AP, the administration also intends to tell Congress next month that its central military objectives for the next four years will include 'winning the current wars while preventing new ones and that its core missions will include both counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations.'

"Top military commanders received a preview of the administration's budget plans through 2015.

"The extra $33 billion in 2010 would mostly go toward the expansion of the war in Afghanistan. It comes after Obama ordered an extra 30,000 troops for that war late last year ..."
Source

Categories: obama, iraq, afghanistan, war-on-terror, military, usa

Gotta hand it to the French

Arise, you children of the fatherland!
The day of glory has arrived.
Against us tyranny's
Bloody standard is raised.
Can't you hear the sounds in the fields,
The howling of these fearsome soldiers?
They are coming into our midst,
To cut the throats of your sons and your mates. 


To arms, citizens!
Form your battalions!
Let us march, let us march!
Let their impure blood
Water our furrows.


To arms, citizens!
Form your battalions!
Let us march, let us march!
Let their impure blood
Water our furrows.


What do they want, this horde of slaves
Of traitors and conspiratorial kings?
For whom are these vile chains,
These long-prepared irons?
Frenchmen, for us, ah! What outrage!
What methods must be taken?
It is us they dare plan
To return to the old slavery!


What! These foreign cohorts!
They would make laws in our courts!
What! These mercenary phalanxes
Would cut down our warrior sons.
Good Lord! By chained hands
Our brow would yield under the yoke.
The vile despots would have themselves be
The masters of destiny.


Tremble, tyrants and traitors,
The shame of all good men.
Tremble! Your parricidal schemes
Will receive their just reward.
Against you we are all soldiers.
If they fall, our young heroes,
France will bear new ones,
Ready to join the fight against you.


Frenchmen, as magnanimous warriors
Bear or hold back your blows;
Spare these sad victims
That they will regret taking up arms against us.
But not these bloody despots –
These accomplices of Bouillé.
All these tigers who pitilessly
Ripped out their mothers' wombs.


We too shall enlist,
When our elders' time has come,
To add to the list of deeds
Inscribed upon their tombs.
We are much less concerned about surviving them,
Than of sharing their coffins.
We shall have the sublime pride
Of avenging or of joining them.


Drive on, sacred patriotism!
Support our avenging arms.
Liberty, cherished liberty!
Join the struggle with your defenders
Under our flags, let victory
Hurry to your manly tone
So that in death your enemies
See your triumph and our glory!


To arms, citizens!
Form your battalions!
Let us march, let us march!
Let their impure blood
Water our furrows.

Gotta hand it to the French - they can sure knock together a scary national anthem.

http://www.marseillaise.org/audio/mireille_mathieu_-_la_marseillaise.mp3

Categories: france, war

The Human Be-In

1967 Timothy Leary, Jerry Rubin, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Dick Gregory, Richard Alpert (later called Baba Ram Dass), Gary Snyder and others attended the first 'Human Be-In' in a park in San Francisco, USA, one of the big events of the 'Summer of Love'.
Among the performers were The Grateful Dead and The Jefferson Airplane (later called Starship). Estimates of numbers in attendance range wildly from 20,000 to 300,000 (estimate in Ringolevio by Emmett Grogan). Leary, in his first San Francisco appearance, uttered the sound bite of the decade: "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out".

Categories: hippie, 1960s, entheogen, psychedelia, rock-music

Arabella Goddard

1836 Arabella Goddard (d. April 6, 1922), French pianist.

On June 20, 1874 her ship, the RMS Flintshire, was wrecked off Townsville, Queensland, Australia, as it returned from Java. Mme Goddard shared a night of torrential rain in an open boat with The Great Blondin, who was also on the Australian leg of a world tour. On August 29, Blondin made several spectacular tightrope crossings of Middle Harbour, Sydney; on September 24 the same year, Mme Goddard laid the foundation stone of the Academy of Music, Ballarat, Victoria ...

Categories: france, australia, music, history, biography

Housing for millions

Australia's government, at the behest of transnational and local corporations, plans to increase the population from 22 million to 100 million (at least) in this century. Only people can stop this madness. "Planning for happy cities, when you're also jamming in millions more people, is politically tricky. Urban planners say they can make better communities with more people, but the NIMBYs don't believe it. Like it or not, high density apartment living is around the corner."
Source (with audio)

Categories: australia, population

Darfuristan

The human tragedy that is Darfur (Sudan) is actually a proxy war in Africa, between China and the USA, with the prize being oil. That fact is behind the US administration's appeal to the humanitarian instincts of Westerners to support intervention. The article, 'Darfuristan' gives some background.

How the world's campaign to stop a genocide created a quagmire

"Sudan is now the seventh biggest oil producer in Africa after Nigeria, Libya, Algeria, Angola, Egypt, and Equatorial Guinea."
Source

Thanx, my good buddy in Israel, Lynn Fux, for the Rolling Stone article link.

Categories: refugee, usa, darfur, africa, military, disinfo, disinformation

Don't Carry Condoms in D.C. -- You Could Be Charged With Prostitution

"Think you might get lucky tonight? Well, if you're in D.C., don't bring more than two condoms in your purse, or you could be arrested as a prostitute ..."
Source

It never ceases to amaze me how puritanism so often fosters disease. So the point is...?

Categories: sex, usa

Whole Foods CEO denies climate change

USA: "Whole Foods Market has long dominated the natural and organic food scene, and most liberals who shop there believe they're putting their money where their mouth is. But the grocery's CEO, John Mackey, has used the bully pulpit the store's success has provided to oppose first labor organizing, then health care reform, and now to deny human-caused climate change ..."
Source: Change.org

Categories: climate-change, global-warming, environment, food, sustainability, usa

Frost fairs on the Thames

The UK's extremely cold weather this winter is not a first. On this day in 1783 London's River Thames froze over and a 'Frost Fair' was held on the frozen river. It has been said that 3,000,000 people attended. Frost fairs, like the unusual weather patterns that allowed them, were a rare occurrence in London, but history records the few times they happened. 

Between 1550 and 1850, Britons endured what may be called the 'Little Ice Age', as the world was then about one degree cooler than the average for the 20th Century. The River Thames froze over 14 times in this period, becoming the location for Frost Fair festivities. Fairs were held in 1564, 1608, 1634, 1715, 1739, and 1789. In 1715 - '16, the Thames froze so solid that a spring tide lifted the ice 13 feet (about 4 metres) without interrupting the fair.

The Public Advertiser declared on January 5, 1789: "This booth to let, the present possessor of the premises is Mr Frost. His affairs, however, not being on a permanent footing, a dissolution or bankruptcy may soon be expected and a final settlement of the whole entrusted to Mr Thaw." ...

Categories: weather, climate-change, london, uk, history

Auld New Year, Scotland

Burning the Clavie, Burghead, Morayshire, Scotland

The people of the north-eastern Scottish fishing port of Burghead enact the ritual Burning of the Clavie (tar barrel) on January 11, preferring their Hogmanay (Scottish New Year's Eve celebration) according to the Old Style calendar that was in use in Scotland until 1660.

So, on the evening of Auld New Year at 6 o'clock, the tar barrel (clavie) is set alight and paraded around town. The clavie is the bottom part of a wooden barrel, mounted on a pole and filled with tar-soaked wood, and must be lit with a piece of burning peat from a local household fire.

The barrel is pounded onto an eight-foot pole called 'the spoke' (using a round stone, never a hammer), the same nail being ritually used every year – perhaps there's a link between clavie and clavus, the Latin for 'nail', though it might come from the Gaelic word for basket, cliabh. Then the clavie is hoisted onto the shoulders of a local villager and the procession begins.

The clavie crew of nine or ten local men (led by the 'Clavie King') must make sure that the clavie isn't dropped, or else bad luck will come to Burghead in the coming year. Eventually, after the crew has stopped at a number of traditional stations along the route, it reaches its destination at an ancient mound called Doorie where it's set on a specially prepared base. It is allowed to burn for some time, before being ritualistically broken up with a hatchet. Flaming embers are then snatched up by onlookers. Traditionally these used to be kindling for a special New Year Fire in the home, but are now kept for luck and even sent to relatives or friends who have moved away from the district.

Opinions differ as to the roots of the ancient festival of the Burning of the Clavie – it might be Pictish, Celtic, Viking or Roman in origin, but it is certainly pre-Christian ...

Categories: british-folklore, pagan, calendar-customs, bonfire, scotland, new-year, pagan

David Horowitz shifted from New Left to Repug Right

1939 Dr David Horowitz, American social activist and former Black Panther Party member who made a significant and well-reported shift from the Left to the Right of politics and is now a prominent Republican.

He was prominent in the American New Left movement but today holds staunchly right-wing views. Horowitz became a well-known Marxist supporter of the various leftist causes of the 1960s and 1970s. He worked as a professor of literature and authored many books on Marxian interpretations of history, as well as serving as an editor of the radical newspaper Ramparts (The Bolivian Diary of Stalinist Che Guevara was originally translated by Ramparts magazine) ...

Categories: conservative, progressive, politics, usa, new-left, counterculture, republican,biography

The King's Evil

1683 King Charles II of England issued orders for the future regulations of the ceremony of touching 'the King's Evil'.

This was the name for scrofula, a a form of tuberculosis, affecting the lymph nodes (usually spread by unpasteurized cow's milk) which from the time of King Clovis of France in 481 CE was believed to be cured by a touch of the monarch's hand.

Shakespeare mentioned it in Macbeth. The famous diarist, Samuel Pepys (1633 - 1703), recorded in his diary for April 10, 1666, that he saw the cure effected by the king. From 1633, the Book of Common Prayer of the Anglican Church had contained a ceremony for this practice.

The notion was first introduced into England by King Edward the Confessor and the belief continued to be common throughout the Middle Ages but began to die out with the coming of the Enlightenment.

In Cornwall, it was believed that the seventh son of a seventh son was able to touch-cure the disease. The seventh son of a seventh son was widely believed in Britain and Ireland to have all kinds of powers ...

Categories: superstition, health, monarchy, folklore, customs, british-folklore, calendar-customs, england

Controlling the Future

"Fifty years ago the population of the world was less than 3 billion. Now it's more than double that number. The projection is 9 billion by 2050. Climate change provides a challenge in providing food for the entire world's people. The current rate of extinctions is 1,000 times faster than what has occurred in the past. Biodiversity is being destroyed. Martin Rees [President of the Royal Society - PW] says we're in denial about some risks. Top of the list is climate change. Science, says Rees is the global culture. Rees says the present century may be a defining moment as we are the first species to hold the future of the planet in its hands."
Source (with audio)

Categories: environment, science, population, abc, radio-national, climate-change, global-warming, radio

Similar Images in Google Image Search

I missed this when it was launched in October. Google Image Search now has Similar Images, which I find useful, and is explained here and here.

There is also Google Image Swirl, which I don't find of much use, especially when compared to Cooliris, which is a stunning, fast and practical way to search images. I doubt I'll ever use Image Swirl, but if you're interested, it's explained here.

Categories: internet-resource, art, photography, google

The death of Emperor Norton

1880 Norton I (b. 1811), Emperor of the United States of America and Protector of Mexico, died.

America's greatest leader was on his way to a lecture at the Academy of Natural Sciences in San Francisco when he dropped dead on Grant Avenue.

When he died, the Chronicle newspaper featured the headline: 'Le Roi est Mort':

On the reeking pavement, in the darkness of a moonless night under the dripping rain ... Norton I, by the grace of God, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, departed this life.

Norton I lay in state for two days, his body dressed in a new imperial uniform provided by the city fathers of San Francisco, and respectfully visited by more than 30,000 of his loyal subjects; the funeral cortege on January 10 was two miles long. Area flags were hung at half mast; businesses were closed. The funeral arrangements were the most elaborate San Francisco had ever seen. On January 11, the gods blackened the San Franciscan skies with a total solar eclipse.

The people of San Francisco erected a monument over his grave, with the epitaph:

NORTON I, EMPEROR OF THE UNITED STATES,
PROTECTOR OF MEXICO, JOSHUA A. NORTON, 1819-1880

In 1934, the remains of Emperor Norton I were transferred, again at the expense of the City of San Francisco, to a gravesite of moderate splendour at Woodlawn Cemetery.

In the religion of Discordianism, Emperor Norton is considered a Saint, Second Class, the highest spiritual honour attainable by an actual (non-fictional) human being.

More on Emperor Norton

Categories: eccentric, odd, san-francisco, usa

When Left and Right agree, duck for cover

Woe betide us when Left and Right wings agree that something should not be an issue. It will barely get on the public agenda. Take, for example, the population crisis. The Left tends to deny it altogether, because "the trouble is not population, but the ownership and distribution of wealth and resources". You must never cross a Leftie with a divergent view, or you will be heavily jumped upon.

The Right, as the ordained political handservant of corporate capitalism, naturally wants as many new consumers as can fit into the sardine can and the mall car park. Bingo! The world's No. 1 issue is practically ignored by all, including the media, because of two sets of blinkers. We might all perish because of the intransigence of the wing nuts whose obesiance to ideology and/or wealth outweighs the common good.

Other examples abound. Another favourite of mine is the dissolution some years ago of psychiatric hospitals in New South Wales. The Right wanted to "rationalize" (flog off) the fabulous public properties -- many in grand old buildings with large grounds on magnificent waterfront locations -- and privatize/outsource mental health services. The Left, from the 1970s abandoning its working class roots and becoming increasingly pro-privatization, wanted the same, and also had a tendency towards anti-psychiatry, with many Lefties viewing that profession as old-fashioned, reactionary and a tool of the elite class. With barely a murmur, the hospitals were flogged off to a breed of people mistakenly called 'developers', and the mad people discharged. The result ... every second person you sit next to on a bus in Sydney is talking to himself.

Another example has been pornography and the sex industry. The Right has a traditional tendency towards Protestant puritanism. In Australia, the Left is disproportionately Roman Catholic. The Left also has a strong tendency towards a feminist view that sex industries exploit women. So these are always Cinderella industries, marginalized, afraid to stick their heads up, and virtually off the agenda of public discourse except in a condemnatory way. Censor the Internet to within an inch of its life? Make Australia's Net as gutted as China's and Iran's? You won't see the Left tackling this issue head on, and the Right is likely to have its way. When Left and Right agree, only a more-massive-than-usual grassroots movement can get a wedge in.

For the same reasons and under the same power dynamics, gay marriage ends up in the bin of lost or difficult causes. The New South Wales Labor government still refuses to allow it, but since the conservative Opposition feels the same way, there is virtually no debate between the parties. When there is no debate between two opposite and competing parties -- the two wingswer -- there is nothing for the media to report, so they will chase ambulances, celebrities and classified advertising revenue as ever.

These are not the only reasons that certain issues sink or swim in the public agenda, and for brevity I've only painted the problem in broad brush strokes, but I have observed public discourse long enough to feel fairly confident enough to posit this theory.

Overloading Australia

Australia's population reached 10 million the year I turned 7 (1960), and is now 22 million (see figures). At the current rate, it will be 100 million at the end of this century. Big Biz wants the population to expand as fast as possible to provide new consumers, so both sides of parliament are Big Populationists. Prime Minister Krudd even brags of it. The government gives financial baby bonuses, for fuck's sake!

Mark O'Connor, author of Overloading Australia, was interviewed on the topic, and it makes fascinating listening, not just to Australians, as it applies to the whole world.

Listen here

Categories: australia, population, environment, corporations, kevin-rudd

Feast of St Distaff, a joke saint

Today was named by some medieval English comedian after an imagined saint, Distaff, and honours the distaff, a sort of yarn spinning device.

It was also called ‘Rock Day’ in England until the 19th Century, the custom being for women to return (after the Christmas holidays) to the spinning wheel (which was also called a ‘distaff’, or ‘rock’). Men went back to work on Plough Monday, the first Monday after Twelfth Day.

Today is the first day after the ‘twelve days of Christmas’ which began on Boxing Day (the Feast of St Stephen), December 26. The women having gone back to the distaff, or rock, the men would play the prank of setting the flax on fire; in retaliation the women would drench the men from their water pails.

Most women would spin whenever they had nothing else to do. Thus, women were associated with the distaff. Because an unmarried woman was likely to do a lot of this work rather than caring for children and other domestic duties associated with marriage and motherhood in those days, she was known as a spinster, a term that was commonly used in Australia until about the 1960s and until more recently could still be found in some official documents.

The spear side and the distaff side were legal terms for male and female children with regard to inheritance. There is a French proverb "The crown of France never falls to the distaff." ...

Tagged: england, britain, british-folklore, folklore, customs, saint, religion, christianity, medieval, lore, calendar-customs