Life ends in death. (Should I have included a spoiler warning for that?) So it's entirely appropriate that the first two of today's significant events deal with new life and protecting it. And it is a fitting tribute to the natural order of things that the third event deals with hardship and the fourth event deals with death.

This date in 1796 is commonly given to the first smallpox vaccination, though inoculations against the disease date back to the 2nd century BCE.

On this date in 1939, a 5-year-old woman gave birth.

On this date in 1961, Freedom Riders in Anniston, Ala., were viciously attacked by people apparently not yet sold on the idea of equal rights for equal people, and especially not sold on the idea of whites helping those people achieve that equality.

And on this date in 1970, 10 days after Kent State shocked the nation, police fired an FBI-estimated 460 shots at an unruly crowd of students at historically black Jackson State College, killing one university student and one high school student and injuring several others.

Today in 1857, a son is born in Almora, India, to a military family. (No, not John McCain.) After completing his schooling in England, which in 1857 is operating India as a sort of colony, the boy who has become a man and then a doctor takes a job in India in a hospital.

Once in India again, the good doctor gets busy on a disease that so thoroughly wiped out Native American populations in 17th century Virginia and North Carolina that they couldn't maintain sufficient numbers for slave purposes. It is only a matter of time before he figures out that disease or it figures out him.

And in 1902, five years after contracting malaria, Dr. Sir Ronald Ross receives the Nobel Prize for his work on the deadly disease.

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing


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I was just taking a quick look at the BBC, trying to get some news on China. The earthquake wasn't covered well by MSM in the USA. I guess they figure there aren't enough Chinese in the USA to give it coverage. Who are the racists running the media? Anyway I stumbled onto the following from the BBC: "Pupils in England on average take 70 national tests while at school;
54,000 examiners employed in national tests;25 million test papers each year" The conclusion was that they still need national testing but that teachers shouldn't spend as much time teaching to the test. How can we be so stupid when we're discussing education?

Lately it's become apparent to some of us here in the Orange Forest that if one desires to see one's diary reach the rec list, one's chances are greatly improved if the title includes a hint of conversion to Obamaism, a pillorying of Hillary, or the old stand-by, BREAKING!!!  Now, by nature, historioranters don't get to shout "breaking" all that often, but since you all seem to have abandoned Mike Gravel, and have said everything that could possibly be said about Barrackemiah and/or Billary, I'm left with little choice but to pander like Senator Clinton at a Great Silent Majority rally.

So join me, if you will, just outside the Cave of the Moonbat, where tonight we'll be scanning the skies, on the lookout for a school-bus-sized piece of space junk that NASA tells us (well, told us – the subject of this story broke literally and figuratively between 1973 and 1979) could crash/land almost anywhere on Earth.  Perhaps in our observations, we'll even get a glimpse of that rarest of celestial phenomena: A presidential candidate with a viable, workable, ambitious space policy.

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing


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At 2:28 pm local time a major M7.9 earthquake struck China near the city of Chengdu in Sichuan province.  BBC reports 8500 dead , but USGS  analysis shows that 200,000 people were exposed to violent to extreme shaking that could cause heavy damage in well built structures and very heavy damage in vulnerable structures.

Survivor struggles to escape.

By Reuters

Moreover, close to a million people lived where strong shaking could cause heavy damage in vulnerable structures. This USGS analysis suggests that early news reports many be underestimating the extent of this disaster.

The city of Chengdu,with about 11 million inhabitants, 55 miles east of the rupture, was spared from heavy damage because the thrust event concentrated the worst damage near the fault rupture.

I knew it would happen.

I knew that at some point, one Today in History would be more than the flap of a butterfly's wings in creating another Today in History.

But my God did I ever hope it wouldn't be like how today's entry was born.

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Lord Acton hadn't written that for a Mother's Day card, but it could have been appropriate.  Royalty does not tend to make good parents.  You could ask Prince Charles...or his sons, and they are dysfunctional at a time when they are only pampered mannekins.  Imagine what they would be perpetrating on each other if real power were at stake.  (Prince Philip found impaled on polo mallet.... Prince Charles belatedly discovers that many poisons are organic vegetables.)  

But on this day, we should pay special tribute to some of the worst mothers in royal history:

On this date in 1945, a horse bearing a Jewish Russian army officer comes to a German factory in Brněnec, Czechoslovakia. Almost 1,100 prisoners, all but two of them Jews, have been there for seven months and are now liberated by the officer's presence. They greet him, asking where they should go, as the director of the camp, a Nazi industrialist/businessman born in what was then Austria-Hungary, fled earlier that week with the other six Jews from his factory, his work done.

On this date in 1993, a different director’s work is coming to an end, as he is 71 days into what will become 92 days in Poland, filming his account of those workers and their move from a former Jewish factory in Kraków to another former Jewish factory, this the one in Brněnec.

The Nazi businessman is Oskar Schindler, the director is Steven Spielberg, and the account is Schindler’s List.

Happy Mothers Day to all the moms who are reading this.  As for all the rest of us, including the moms who are daughters of still-living moms, call your mother today.  I know I will be!

Welcome back to Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday, in which I present a sampling of this week's science news and the readers celebrate science, space, and the environment.

First up, the New York Times slideshow reviewing this week in science.

Mouse Lemurs and a Satellite View of a Flood

Also depicted--carbon beads from an asteroid impact, a microscopic fungus, missing ordinary matter in space, an erupting Chilean volcano from space, and great tits (the birds) in England.

More on these and other science stories after the jump.

Food and sex are two of my favorite things, because they are universal sacraments. They are practiced by all faiths, agnostics, and non-believers. Like other sacraments, food lends itself to transcendental  moments.

It's hard to imagine that Papa John's, Sbarro's, Domino's, and all the independent pizzerias were not always ubiquitous in America. Sure, there was pizza, but once upon the 1950s, when I was little, pizza could still be a new and wondrous thing.

I still remember when I was about five, and one day Dad slipped off in the car just before dinner time. I asked Mom what was up, and she said Dad was going to bring dinner home from some thing called a pizza shop.

A lot of good teaching goes on at dailyKos.  But a lot of it doesn't get read by everyone who wants to read it, because diaries scroll by so fast.
This series is about diaries that teach and about things you want to learn.  Could be any subject - an academic subject, a skill, a hobby, almost anything - but not diaries that simply inform, or it would include all of daily kos.

Last week, Lineatus asked me to write a guest Dawn Chorus diary on location in Iraq. I wrote the following last weekend in Suleymaniya, a city in the Kurdistan region, and am posting it this morning:

I’ll give you an update on what’s flying around in my part of the world, but first permit me to share a couple websites, and allow me a short digression on ravens.

Good morning, and here comes McCain — oops, the rain — again!  Welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blogging.

We've had a wickedly wet, windy week here in Denver — well, not really, but I like the alliteration.

We did get a blast of much-needed rain on Wednesday, the day starting with the hard downpour of a thunderstorm, followed by on-and-off drizzles for the remainder of the day.  And the wind has been blowing pretty consistently since it brought the clouds in Tuesday afternoon.

The clouds and wind have stuck around since then, and more cool and wet is predicted for today.  I'd be pissed about it — after all, this is Denver, it is Saturday, and we expect lots of sunny days chasing the clouds away — but we desperately need the moisture.

And Arwen the Terrible looks so pretty and proper posing amidst the posies (damn, just can't get rid of that alliteration!)

Welcome back.

Welcome to Frugal Fridays where we share money saving tips, discuss living frugally and generally talk about personal finance issues.  In the spring, a frugal person's fancy turns to ... art?  OK, that may have not been the ending to that sentence you were first expecting, but there's a logic to it, trust me.  With the warmer weather, comes a plethora of street fairs and other opportunities to appreciate the talents of local artists and craftsmen.  You can enjoy these events for free (the most favorite word of all in the cheapskate's lexicon) but you can also pick up beautiful items for your home at a bargain.  Best of all, you can be assured that all the proceeds go directly to the artist, not to any middle man.  

My thanks go out to all the guest hosts in the past month.  I'd really like to have more of this in the future.  I've been told that people like to get other perspectives than mine each week and to be honest, I like goofing off Fridays.  Please email me if you'd like to volunteer.

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing


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