Friday

Good morning,

Quote of the day:

“A lot of travel is fatal to anger, prejudice and narrow mindedness.”

                                                Mark Twain

I think can prove there is a God (or superior being) using logic alone. Here is what I am talking about: Recently over in China a tomb was uncovered that was about 6,500 years old. It was packed with the dead person's personal effects. This means they believed in an afterlife. The same can be said about the Maya, Vikings, Egyptians, Iroquois, Apache, Comanche, nearly all European nations in prehistory, and almost all nations of the middle and near east. Where did the seed of the thought of an afterlife come from? This concept is universal...how did this happen? One person said that human beings are born with the instinct of self preservation and the fear of death. OK...if that is true, how did all of that end up in the human psyche? Just imagine that tadpole looking microscopic creature that is swimming round in a seminal fluid and eventually penetrates an egg that is also microscopic both of which already have the instinct for self preservation and fear of death. How is this possible? How does that tadpole know where to go and what to do? It also has a rather inventive tail-like device for moving around that automatically drops away once the penetration is complete, who designed that? Answers anyone?

There is a site in the Bolivian Andes known as Teotihuacan. It is on the south end of Lake Titicaca. Someone built a temple there thousands of years ago using technology that would challenge what we have available today. The Temple is in ruins but there is still a doorway that is over 10 feet high made of three pieces of carved granite weighing thousands of tons. There are slabs of granite that have a surface that has been polished to within .0001 mm from being absolutely perfect. There are “H” shaped grooves cut into the granite that do not do all the way through. The surface on the inside of the “H” is also nearly perfectly polished, not only that, the corners are exactly, not almost, but exactly 90 degrees, both the inside and outside corners. This may be difficult for some to comprehend but those with a mechanical mind will. The local Indians have been asked how they were able to accomplish all of this and the say that it was not them...they say in their native language “It was the Gods” while pointing to the sky. The present day Indians (Inca), are growers of a few vegetables and herders of sheep, llama and goats, etc. Advanced engineering to them is unknown, much less what happened at Teotihuacan. There supposedly is a man living there that is the oldest person in the world. I think he is alleged to be 126 years old. He supposedly was born in 1888...or thereabouts. He said that a diet of potatoes mixed with a specific grain plus crewing coca leaves continuously is the secret to his longevity. Ingesting that much coke made him feel he was 20 years old anyway.

US writer Kate Chopin wrote “The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.” Kate was a great wordsmith.

This Date in History August 21

1831 On this date a slave named Nat Turner, believing he was directed by God to free the slaves, rose up and began gathering other slaves in Southampton County, Virginia and headed for the armory in Jerusalem, Virginia. Turner was educated and an ordained minister unlike the majority of the slaves in America. It was Turner’s intention to break into the armory in Jerusalem, gather as many weapons as possible and then head for the Great Dismal Swamp to hide from the eventual pursuers. On his way to the armory he gathered up seven other slaves and chose to slaughter his owner and all of his owner’s family. Over the next two days Turner assimilated 75 followers and they rampaged across the countryside killing about 60 honkies. Finally the whites gathered a defensive force and summoned the Virginia Militia who showed up with 3,000 soldiers and crushed the rebellion. Nearly all of the slaves in rebellion were caught and unceremoniously hanged. It was not until October that Turner himself was caught and hanged. The end result of this rebellion was the colonies passed laws that forbade the movement, gathering or education of slaves. These times were dark ones in the history of this great nation. But at the risk of being politically incorrect, I do not feel that I owe and apology to the blacks for what my ancestors may or may not have participated in. But I feel extremely guilty about the treatment of the Native Americans. It is estimated that at the time that Jamestown was founded there was about 28 million Native Americans in what is now the United States. By the year 1900 there were an estimated 750,000. We came within a hair’s breadth of genocide, y'all. Think on it.

1863 Earlier the state of Missouri was a slave holding state and next door was a hotbed of anti-slavery in Kansas. Needless to say there was much animosity that resulted in several skirmishes at the Kansas/Missouri border. Finally this fighting degenerated into guerrilla warfare on of the pro-Confederate armies was known as Quantrill’s Raiders. This army had as part of their group, Frank and Jesse James, the Younger brothers, “Bloody Bill” Anderson among others. Their ferocity was legendary. For some reason a US army officer kidnapped William Quantrill’s wife and daughters and took them to Kansas City hoping to influence Quantrill to cool it. Unfortunately for all, the building Quantrill’s family was being held in collapsed killing them all. Needless to say what effect this had on Quantrill and his troops. On this date Quantrill, having gathered a huge army, kidnapped four Kansas farmers to lead him to Lawrence, Kansas. Lawrence was long known as a hotbed of anti-slavery sentiment. After Quantrill found Lawrence, he killed the farmers and sent his troops on a rampage through the town. Quantrill’s troops dragged over 185 men from their houses and killed them, sometimes in front of the man’s family. After this they burned Lawrence to the ground and hauled ass back into Missouri with the US Cavalry in hot pursuit. Once back in Missouri the US Cavalry wisely chose to discontinue the pursuit. It is very unlikely that this atrocity would never have been even considered had Quantrill’s family had not been kidnapped and died.

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow