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Wake up and Smell the Coffee
Sometimes it's hard to understand old ways of thinking. With pretty rare exception it's difficult to imagine why anyone would put leeches on a person's body to cure them. Still, it's fascinating to examine some of these old concepts and then imagine how incredibly outside of the box the thinkers were that rejected the old notions and provided our new correct principles of today.
For example: Back in the late 18th century folks believed that when something got hot, a liquid material - heat - was actually mixed into it. This liquid heat diluted the matter causing it to expand. Think about ice melting. The prevailing wisdom wasn't that water was the liquid form of ice but that liquid heat mixed with the ice and it became wet.
Close your eyes and picture a lava flow or butter melting; early western civilization didn't know that these were simply materials changing form. No, early thinkers believed that the rock and the butter with both infused with the same additive - heat.
That is until Sir Benjamin Thompson Rumford came along. Born on this day in 1753, this American physicist constructed the theory that when things heated up tiny invisible particles inside the substance simply moved faster.
Brilliant!
Now if that had been his only claim to fame, you might not know anything about him unless you read the same nerd journals that I like to read, but Rumford used his understanding of how heat works to invent some pretty nifty and crucially important gadgets. That's right; Old Benny Rumford took all that new knowledge about heat and invented the drip coffee maker.
And ever since, Rumford has daily impacted America.
Too bad he couldn't be trusted. See, Rumford was a spy. In fact he ended his days living in exile because he worked as a British secret agent during the American Revolution and folks here sent him away.
If Rumford had had his way, Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Adams, Hancock - and all those other revolutionary dudes - would have gone down in history as nothing more than rogue scoundrels and terrorists.
But our founding fathers prevailed and Rumford got banished to England. Yes, that's right, our "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" were all secured in spite of Rumford's best efforts for oh, about 224 years.
You know what I like best about history? Even when the reality is bleak you can still find things about everyday circumstances that are so downright fascinating that even the most wretched reality becomes mesmerizing.
See, 177 years - to the day - after Rumford's birth another fan of oligarchs named George would be born. Yep, today is Sandra Day O'Connor's birthday, too.
And while O'Connor didn't do anything as routinely vital as invent America's coffee makers, she did become our first woman Supreme Court Justice.
O'Connor has retired now and lives back in Phoenix, Ariz., but I think it's time for her to move. Hey, if we threw Rumford off the continent for attempting to overthrow our democracy, then O'Connor should go, too - for succeeding.
That's right, just 224 years after Rumford gave secrets betraying our nation to King George, Justice O'Connor stopped the ballot counting in Florida.
Now for some reason it's hard for many folks in our country to understand why it's such a bad thing that the right to vote that Jefferson and Madison and those guys bestowed on a free society was denied to so many Floridians.
For the life of me I can't explain to some folks why I believe stealing those votes is treason. But then I realize that I mistakenly assume that everyone values the right to vote as much as I do; as much as Franklin did. And with more folks watching the Super Bowl this year than are likely to vote for president, I'm mistaken.
So let's pretend that O'Connor didn't stop the vote counting in Florida. Let's pretend that she stopped the Super Bowl instead - like fifteen minutes early. Maybe you wouldn't care because your team would've won. But you'd still be cheating.
Now before the next crooked election, get some help from Rumford and wake up and smell the coffee.
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11 Comments so far
Show All"No more mercy for the rich. If yer not making life a living hell for the owning class, yer unpatriotic."
Yeah, and there's one thing the owning class needs in order to own us - money!
So, what's a poor slob to do? (Hint: The answer has something to do with money)
Pat LaMarche claims--
Sometimes it's hard to understand old ways of thinking. With pretty rare exception it's difficult to imagine why anyone would put leeches on a person's body to cure them. Still, it's fascinating to examine some of these old concepts and then imagine how incredibly outside of the box the thinkers were that rejected the old notions and provided our new correct principles of today.
*******************
Actualy, leeches are playing an importaqnt part in assisting those with reattached limbs to have the use of those body parts again. Seems the leeches secreet a substance that dissolves blood clots and restores circulation. Medical leeches are raised all nice and clean and sterile for just such purposes.
Okay, that may not be the reason they were used way back when, but it illustrates the fallacy of Pat's remark:
"it's fascinating to examine some of these old concepts and then imagine how incredibly outside of the box the thinkers were that rejected the old notions and provided our new correct principles of today."
******************
Today all manner of scientific disciplines from quantum physics to molecular chemistry to medical science are verifying that many of the esoteric assertions of mystics and romantics have scientific basis as truth. How did they "know" without scientific method that such things were so?
To add insult to injury...when O'Connor was giving the neocons a license to steal in 2000, she knew she would be retiring on W's watch, thereby assuring that her replacement would be far more right wing than she is.
"Wake up and Smell the Coffee..."
Once upon a time we could actually afford to drink coffee instead of only smell it. Once upon a time...
Here's a thought... mebbe like the poor and vulgar working classes in the colonies back in the 18th century, we should surround O'Connor's house and use her lawn as our toilet. When she goes out for her manicure we throw her furniture on the lawn. Behavior like that got the colonial aristocracy so shitscared they shanghai'd us into fighting a revolution for their benefit. Granted, today it'd get us murdered by Blackwater employees, but at least we'd die as 'Merkaans.
No more mercy for the rich. If yer not making life a living hell for the owning class, yer unpatriotic.
Hear that? The owning class. That is absolutely the right term.
Spy ??? Spy ??? SPY ??????
Funny these words should come from a person whose actions in the 2004 Presidential Campaign have come under question.
Ms LaMarche is accused of being less than honest in her own campaign. Did you know that at more than half of all Green Primary Voters selected Peter Camejo to be on the Green Party Ballot in 2004 ? More than 72% of Greens in California voted for Camejo. Half of all registerd Green Party Members reside in California. LaMarche along with a number of self-selected operatives many of whom resided in states where the Green Party was not qualified embarked on a campaign to disenfranchise registered Greens who voted for Camejo and Nader in the 2004 primaries. After writing rules that allowed them to pack the Green Party Delegate contingent LaMarche along with her cohorts like Medea Benjamin pulled off a feat of political treachery that would have done Richard M Daley proud. After flipping off the Greens and supplanting Peter Camejo as the Vice Presidential nominee of the party LaMarche then uttered her most famous statement of the campaign when she said she would not vote for herself. When the dust had settle on Nov 3 LaMarche made more noise in support of John Kerry than she had done in the entire runup to the 2004 election. And why is that ? I mean LaMarche is or was suppose to be a Green but right from the outset LaMarche has run her mouth off about DemocRATS and hasn't stopped since.
Spies Spies Spies ?
Pat LaMarche accuses Sandra Day O'Connor of being a spy ?
The old adage still holds true.
"It takes one to know one."
JustplainJack and lizard - Well, they did promise you an ownership society - they just weren't clear on who the owners would be. (not you)
Welcome to the plantation.
O'Connor is a traitor, plain and simple.
Truthie ,
THANKS for your informative post. I had only seen the brief bio. at the end of her articles here and hadn't realised that she's the same as the Pat LaMarche you speak of. I remember 2004 as you describe it definitely well, clearly, and totally agree with you; even if I am of no affiliation with any particular party in the U.S., but [independent].
Poet (March 26th, 2008 1:10 pm) wrote: "Today all manner of scientific disciplines from quantum physics to molecular chemistry to medical science are verifying that many of the esoteric assertions of mystics and romantics have scientific basis as truth."
Poet, you have a very good point here -- as more is being discovered about the previously 'invisible' universe of everything from neutrinos to black holes, the interconnectedness of matter and our mental state in apprehension of, and effect on, reality -- once dismissed and derided -- is now being seriously studied by science, and it's been repeatedly verified that the mind is a powerful source of healing, as tests using placebos comfirm. Ironically, the teachings of Buddha may bring you closer to the 'ultimate answer' (should there be one) than Stephen Hawking. BTW, one of my favorite books on the fascinating complexities of nature is "The Lives of a Cell" by Lewis Thomas. Here's a quote from the book, courtesy of Wikipedia:
"I have been trying to think of the earth as a kind of organism, but it is no go. I cannot think of it this way. It is too big, too complex, with too many working parts lacking visible connections. The other night, driving through a hilly, wooded part of southern New England, I wondered about this. If not like an organism, what is it like, what is it most like? Then, satisfactorily for that moment, it came to me: it is most like a single cell. [...]
"Or perhaps we are only at the beginning of learning to use the system, with almost all our evolution as a species still ahead of us. Maybe the thoughts we generate today and flick around from mind to mind...are the primitive precursors of more complicated, polymerized structures that will come later, analogous to the prokaryotic cells that drifted through shallow pools in the early days of biological evolution. Later, when the time is right, there may be fusion and symbiosis among the bits, and then we will see eukaryotic thought, metazoans of thought, huge interliving coral shoals of thought."
-- Lewis Thomas Wikipedia entry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Thomas
Not in any way to defend Sandra Day O'Connor's illegal Supreme Court vote to install Junior contrary to the US Constitution, but she said she thought she was voting for another guy like his Dad, as awful as he was. After she realized what irresponsible neocon maniacs Dim Son and Cheney truly were, she is said to have stayed on the court and did vote with the 'liberals' on many issues before she was forced to retire for health reasons. In retirement, O'Connor has made speeches in which she has called for upholding our rights against an out-of-control Executive Branch, not apologizing, of course, for her substantial role in handing power to that branch.