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.

Swastika – Symbol Beyond Redemption

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swastikaRecent debate over the Confederate Battle Flag led me to dig out a book I read years ago about another symbol: The Swastika: Symbol Beyond Redemption? by Steven Heller.

With widely spaced lines and half-page margins filled with illustrations, Heller’s slender volume is more a long essay than a book, so this is a short review. He asks, “Can the same image that represents the Holocaust ever represent anything else?”

Before Aryan mystics appropriated the swastika and Hitler adopted it for the Nazis, it was a good-luck symbol and decorative motif appearing all over the world. The swastika became so strongly associated with the Nazis that, during World War II, Native Americans burned tribal textiles with the symbol and Jewish congregations chiseled it out of mosaic floors in synagogues. Americans destroyed thousands of items adorned with swastikas, from Girls’ Club magazines to US Army shoulder patches. Continue reading →

As American as Apple Pie

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pie_apple.svg.medAn article on Slate.com explains that sweet dessert pies are a fairly recent invention:

“We eat sweet pie at Thanksgiving on the premise that it captures the cuisine of colonial America. It does nothing of the kind. Sweet pie didn’t gain wide popularity until the 19th century… (in A Tramp Abroad, Mark Twain included sweet pies in a list of things he missed about his homeland…), and the full American pie menu, in all of its moods and seasons, did not come into being till the 20th. American as apple pie, the phrase and concept, entered our lexicon in the late and cosmopolitan throes of the Jazz Age. The most American thing about pie, in fact, may be its retroactive claim of folksy authenticity and early dominance.” The apple’s status as an immigrant seems appropriate since it mirrors most of America’s families.

Today I Found Out notes that “the first recorded recipe for apple pie was written in 1381 in England, and called for figs, raisins, pears, and saffron in addition to apples.” But no sugar – a rare and expensive ingredient – and the pastry was used as a baking container, not to be eaten. “A recipe for apple pie very similar to today’s recipes appeared in a Dutch cookbook in 1514.” But the apple pie hadn’t made it to America yet.

Skipping ahead to World War II, a common soldiers’ slogan was “‘for mom and apple pie’ which later gave rise to ‘as American as motherhood and apple pie’. Along with Phrase Finder, Today agrees that “apparently in the 1960s, we began to be ‘as American as apple pie.'”

I found one outlier. Kelly Kazek posted that the phrase “was in use by the 1860s, leading to its place in history as an American favorite,” but – alas – she lists no citation. Could “1860s” be a typo? Her phone number is on the web page, though, if you’d like to pester her.

Cancer – Ho Hum

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Your smart phone reminds you – time for the annual test. You buy a capsule of nanoparticles – each one graphene with a tiny magnetic core, biodegradable and harmless, so available over-the-counter. If you’ve lost it since last year, you buy the corresponding wrist band to wear after swallowing the capsule.

Inside your body, the nanoparticles spread out. If they encounter some cancerous cells, they bind to them and mobilize some into your blood stream. Passing by the wrist band, they signal a positive result.

“Well, shoot,” you say. “I’ve got cancer. Better make an appointment – hmmm. I’m meeting friends for lunch on Tuesday. Let’s make it Wednesday.”

You don’t even need to see a doctor. Technicians slide you into a radio-frequency unit, maybe after another nanoparticle dose. Radio waves kill every cancer cell in your body – solid tumor, free-floating metastasized, it doesn’t matter – without damage to healthy cells.

“Better repeat the diagnostic test in a month,” the technician warns.

Yeah, yeah… You tap the new date into your phone and go merrily on your way.

Science fiction? Distant future?

Maybe not.

“This May, [Dr. Steven A. Curley, oncologist] filed protocols with the Italian Ministry of Health to test the radio wave machine on humans diagnosed with pancreatic and liver cancer. Pending approval in the fall, human clinical trials will begin in the spring of next year in Naples, Italy.”

The initial studies are aimed at proving the treatment is safe for humans. Success will mean trials to find out how effective it is.

Where did this idea come from? John Kanzius was a retired radio engineer, amateur radio operator, and dying of leukemia. Sick from chemotherapy, he became a citizen scientist, studied the latest cancer research, developed a radiofrequency-based concept to kill cancer cells without invasive surgery or chemotherapy, demonstrated the technique on hot dogs in his basement shop, dogged oncologists until he teamed up with Dr. Curley, and – well – read the story at newsweek.com. (Note how different it is from inventors of perpetual motion machines or pills to turn water into gasoline, who claim persecution.) Continue reading →

No Love Lost

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Don_Quijote_and_Sancho_PanzaI think of this phrase as meaning two people who never liked each other are at odds again.

The Phrase Finder message board includes this: “A translation in 1620 of ‘Don Quixote offers this passage: ‘There’s no love lost,’ quote Sancho, ‘for she speaks ill of me too when she list.'” It also says “several centuries ago, this phrase carried two opposing meanings.” The old meaning is along the lines of “their affection for each other is undiminished.”

The Free Dictionary says this phrase “originated in the 1500s and until about 1800 could indicate either extreme love or extreme hate. The former was meant in ‘No love between these two was lost, each was to the other kind’ ( Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, 1765). Today, however, the term signifies ill will exclusively.”

It seems odd to offer a citation for the obsolete meaning but not for the current meaning. The Don Quixote translation is the best I found.

GMOs Revisited – Still Look Fine to Me

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tomato.svg.medProducts certified by Non GMO Project (by a private entity – proving the government is not the only source of such information) nearly tripled last year, and Whole Foods may require GMOs to be labeled in their stores, while Trader Joe’s and Chipotle have “sworn off”

GMOs, according to slate.com. But my opinion, expressed in previous posts about GMOs, has not changed. I see opposition to GMOs as increasingly irrational.

While philosophical concerns may appeal to some, fear of health effects seems to be the primary motivation for avoiding GMO foods. I have noticed no one worries about GMOs that manufacture medications.

I still find no compelling scientific evidence that GMOs are more dangerous than conventional foods.

Slate says “it’s true that the issue is complicated. But the deeper you dig, the more fraud you find in the case against GMOs. It’s full of errors, fallacies, misconceptions, misrepresentations, and lies… [Activists] defend drugs, pesticides, and non-GMO crops that are loaded with the same proteins [as the GMOs they condemn].” That’s a pretty strong statement.

The article goes on to discuss a few anti-GMO campaigns in detail, concluding that “the stories of papaya, Bt, and Golden Rice demonstrate, in several ways, that [health] concerns are unfounded.” If you’re worried I encourage you to read the article for yourself.

Slate also discusses pesticide resistance, which is a legitimate concern. Evolution doesn’t care where environmental factors come from, and weeds could become Roundup resistant. Shifting to crops that are naturally herbicide resistant also contributes to the future problem. A wise farmer will look beyond this year’s crop.

Slate also covered the super tomato: “Tomato lovers, rejoice, for science has achieved the impossible: the perfect supermarket tomato. The Garden Gem won’t bruise during shipping, it resists many of the major diseases that regularly decimate tomato crops… the Garden Gem is very different from every other supermarket tomato: flavor. It actually has it. Lots.”

Sounds perfect, doesn’t it? If your own garden tomatoes are suffering from blossom rot, like mine this year, this could be the answer. But the tomato industry (yes, apparently there is such a thing) has said “no” in what Slate calls “incomprehensible dysfunction in the tomato market.” Garden Gem would cost more, and the tomato industry does not believe consumers will pay more because they just won’t believe a supermarket tomato will taste better.

I bet they’d be cheaper than my garden-grown! (Dip into The 64 Dollar Tomato for a story crazier than mine.)

Our previous GMO posts are here.

Jim Crow Law

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Reviewing the book The New Jim Crow made me wonder how this phrase originated.

“It is not clear how, but the minstrel character’s name ‘Jim Crow’ became a kind of shorthand for the laws, customs and etiquette that segregated and demeaned African Americans primarily from the 1870s to the 1960s.” ferris.edu

“The phrase ‘Jim Crow Law’ can be found as early as 1892 in the title of a New York Times article about voting laws in the South.” wikipedia It sounds like the term was already known to readers, so it seems to have originated colloquially, and no one knows who coined it.

In the 1800s, white performers donned “blackface” makeup for minstrel shows where they “played the roles of ignorant, lazy, joyous blacks. Audiences roared with laughter.”

Thomas Dartmouth Rice, a native of New York, was well known for blackface performances where he “acted like a buffoon, and spoke with an exaggerated and distorted imitation of African American Vernacular English. In his Jim Crow persona, he also sang ‘Negro ditties’ such as ‘Jump Jim Crow’.” ferris.edu

Rice supposedly got his act from specific slaves he observed, even buying their clothes to use as his costume. black-face.com