Miscellaneous Nonsense

Some bloggers are upset that President Obama karate-chopped a fly during a video'd session. Also, some animal-rights organization are sending him some traps so that in the future he can capture flies and put them outside alive. I thought about this as I crushed a mean-looking 2" long spider this morning.

I would rather not kill any living creature, which is one reason why I have never wanted to be a hunter. I was more of a gatherer. (See that new movie: Year One) When I was a teen-ager, I studied Hindu mysticism and was impressed with the fact that some holy men wear mouth masks in order not to breath in any insects and become the cause of their demise.

I've read that our skin is covered with layers of living creatures.. bacteria. Are we not killing them whenever we rub our aching knees or shoulders? Are we not killing ants and other small living creatures as we walk through a meadow? Don't our agents kill crabs, bulls, mackrel, shrimp, etc, etc.

Survival of the fittest. I guess at this point of time on earth, humans are the fittest predators. It certainly wasn't always that way. Although some people don't believe it, humans were not around for the millions of years that dinosaur-like creatures ruled the planet.

And what about the Golden Rule? Would we like to be crushed by a giant spider? I guess we have to maintain a reasonable middle-of-the-road approach to all of this. We should not knowingly kill if it can't be helped. And, yes, I will try to catch an insect in the house and try to let them loose outside.. or at least flush them unkilled down the toilet bowl where they at least have a fighting chance of survival if they can swim.

Segue: I learned today that some baby flaminos in a zoo are scared by pink hand-puppets that their keepers made for them to help them learn how to feed. By the way, baby flamingos are grey.

Another thing that I learned is that a nude soccer game was interrupted in New Zealand by a "streaker". Do you remember "streakers" from decades ago? You guessed it.. this "streaker" was fully clothed.

At this year's spelling bee championships, a young lady won by spelling the word: LAODICEAN.
Holy cow! When I heard this, I searched my memory for this word. I had heard it used in church years ago, I thought.

I looked the word up and found that it means: lukewarm or indifferent in religion or politics.

The word comes from Paul's epistle to the Colossians. He wanted his buddies in the church there to let the Laodiceans know that they should be paying more attention to what he had been teaching about Christ. (Those damnable Laodiceans just were not interested. they would rather be paying more attention to acquiring worldly possessions and doing a lot of sinning.) The word was also used in Revelations. (If you are into Bible lore, you might have some fun tracing the origin of the Laodiceans and where they fit into the scheme of things during Paul's time. When I went to the Baptist summer camp and became a "Royal Ambassador" for two weeks, most of my time was spent inside a cabin studying the "Life of Paul." You might want to think about where Christianity would be today if it wasn't for his salesmanship.)

The newspaper articles that I read about the spelling bee started out: "The Indian-American girl, Kanya Shivashankar won..." Why do we have to use these hyphenated tags in the U.S.? Obama is called the first African-American President. Sotomayor is called a Spanish-American or a Puerto-Rican American.. etc. Aren't we all just-plain "Americans?" Right now, I am trying to find out who my biological father was. For most of my life, I thought that he was an Italian-American (his parents emigrated from Italy years ago.) Since my mother was a Mayflower descendant, should I have been labeled: Joe Vaughan, the Italian-Yankee-American? One of my cousins could be called then a Czech-Yankee-American.

And then, of course, there are Native-Americans. They were immigrants too... since their ancestors reportedly came here over the Bering Straight. We are a nation of "minorities". We are a "melting pot".. and isn't it great to be living in such a diversified country? When we lived in Randallstown, Maryland, our neighbors were of many derivations. Just in our small place called Sonya Court, there were people with Jewish, English, Italian, German, Scottish and Yankee backgrounds. We all got along real well and had fun together. The best part I thought was that we could take part in many of the ethnic celebrations that took place.

Ain't life great!