Author Archives: Ponderer

About Ponderer

Ponderer also writes science fiction and science-inspired rhyming poetry. Check her out at katerauner.wordpress.com/ She worked at Rocky Flats for 22 years - you may know her as Kathy London.

Ecstatic Nation – before, during, and after America’s Civil War

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Ecstatic nation picSince I recently read 1858, reviewed here, I thought Brenda Wineapple’s  book Ecstatic Nation, Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848 – 1877 was a logical follow-up.  It is fairly long at 526 pages, and the 74 pages of notes are connected to the text via by page number rather than footnotes.

The enormity of the Civil War continues to amaze and horrify me.  Wineapple says the number of soldiers who died from a combination of battle and illness was recently revised upwards to over 750,000, “far greater than the number of men who perished or would perish in all other U.S. wars put together.”  According to the count on www.militaryfactory.com , with Wineapple’s “recent revision”, that’s true. Continue reading →

Nation Un-Building

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Ecstatic Nation CommentaryThis commentary is inspired by Wineapple’s book Ecstatic Nation, reviewed elsewhere on this blog.  While I marvel at America’s luck in ending the Civil War without an endless insurgency, in many ways our Civil War did not end in 1865.  For a hundred years Jim Crow laws continued the subjugation of black Americans, and the civil rights movement , which peaked in the 1960s, was very regional in America.  Even today some writers say two thirds of the members of Congress who figured in the recent U.S. government shutdown are from the old Confederacy.  (See http://bit.ly/1c4wJcc and scroll down to “Confederate Heritage”, or see the Atlantic’s count at http://bit.ly/1aTtqnu  )

The anti-government political position goes beyond any residual racism.  Consider that Wineapple says that, by the end of the Civil war, the Confederacy was ready to give up slavery but not their independence as a sovereign nation.

Today there seems to be an international anti-Union movement.  Continue reading →

GMOs, Science, and Morality

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RF_alum has written an informative string of postings on GMOs.  Here’s my two cents.

The GMOs that cause controversy are foods.  No one seems to want to stop producing insulin or vaccines using GMOs, or to ban oil-eating bacteria used to clean up spills in the environment.  Furthermore, I read negative opinions mostly about food crops farmed on an industrial scale, (especially corn, wheat, and soy beans), GMOs that resist Roundup or incorporate biocides, and anything produced by Monsanto.

Since we all agree that healthy food and sustainable production are good things and starvation and high prices are bad things, what causes the public policy controversy?

Many people hold moral and spiritual objections to GMO foods.  They draw on one of humanity’s six moral foundations (see book reviewed here):

Sanctity: People know that some things are noble and pure while others are degrading and base. These sacred values bind groups together.

People also show a practical skepticism about any new or unfamiliar risk.  Both views are important to the debate.  Public policies must consider moral values, and no one should get away with lying about the science. Continue reading →

The Millionaire Next Door

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Millionaire Next DoorThe Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealthy by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko

The Millionaire Next Door is an old book, first published in 1996, with only the preface updated in 2010.  (“The millionaire next door is still alive and kicking even today in this recession.”)  Given the current slow recovery from our “Great Recession” and the hollowing out of the middle class, I thought it would be fun to read about how people amass unusual wealth.

I enjoyed the book and found the authors’ style easily drew me along in my reading.  The book is based on surveys and face-to-face interviews with over 500 American millionaires.  In addition to statistics there are case studies which add interest and a sense of the real people involved.

The authors feel that popular culture presents the wrong view of wealthy people.  “Americans have no idea about the true inner workings of a wealthy household.”  I can see why Hollywood avoids real life millionaires: they’re boring.  “Wealth is more often the result of a lifestyle of hard work, perseverance, planning, and, most of all, self-discipline.”  Continue reading →

Salad Days

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I never warmed to this phrase.  It means a youthful time, accompanied by carefree idealism, though recently in the U.S. it also means when someone is at the peak of their abilities.  People claim this makes sense because salads are fresh and wilt quickly.

Wikipedia says the phrase was coined by Shakespeare in 1606 in Antony and Cleopatra.  Cleo says “My salad days, / When I was green in judgment, cold in blood.”  There are many sites that agree: Shakespeare seems to make a reliable source.

The phrase became popular only from the middle of the 19th century and has had many literary uses.  Phrases.org notes that “Salad Days” was the title of a popular British musical in 1954.

It still leaves me cold.

Filibuster

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NPR says the term filibuster “first appeared in the English language in 1591, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The word was then `flee-booters’ [for ‘pirates’]. Its origins are probably Dutch, with some Spanish and French influences.” The pronunciation changed over time to our modern “filibuster”. In 1890 an obstructionist legislator was called a filibuster, and the word was on the road to our modern usage.

Online Etymology agrees with the origin of the word.

Free Republic offers more detail on the rise of our current usage.  In the early 1800s Senators began making long, irrelevant speeches on the Senate floor, which delayed or even stopped votes on legislation.  Battles over how to deal with the tactic ended in favor of the obstructionists, who were called filibusters by their opponents.  Today the old meaning is lost.  To filibuster is to disrupt and interfere with legislation through delay on the Senate floor.