Honor Thy Currency

Honor Thy Currency

Hi faithful followers (both of you!)  Today's posting is about money --and by this, I mean actual currency:

This kind of money

Did you know that this country has a national currency?  Anybody know what it is?  Is it this?

You know, that's what I thought too!  However, these days it's getting a little more difficult spending these little bills (and their larger denomination brothers in particular), and THAT leads to some problems with some sinister overtones, as well as some just plain pain-in-the-ass inconveniences that you may or may not experience flying an airline whose name may or may not be JetBlue.

"Your seat cushion may be used as a flotation device --who the
fuck am I kidding?  We'll all be dead by the time we hit the water!"

But first, a little primer on just what hell currency is, where it came from, how long we've used it and just how it is under threat today.

I know you have heard me say it time and time again, but it all goes back to the Sumerians

GROAN!

Look, I'm sorry!  Really I am!  It's just that those li'l fuckers were so damn smart that they invented just about everything --with the exception of the arabesque raised-legged fart on demi-point (I invented that).  You see, the Sumerians were the first people who realized that it was a total pain in the scrotum to bring all the goats with you that you wanted to trade for a couple tons of mud-bricks (SO much more classy than those awful dung-bricks the Hurrians were making shit --err, stuff out of). The goats would run off, butt your trading partners in the nuts, eat everything in sight, or just plain DIE before the trade was concluded.  Something else was needed: something that had to be portable, symbolic and as non-goatlike as possible, yet simultaneously preserving the essence of what a goat actually is.

Enter the token:

I don't fit in anywhere

Uhhh, the Sumerian kind.  To solve their goat-exchange problem, the Sumerians made little clay token-sized goat figurines, each about the size of a game-board piece.  Then, all the goat herder had to do was drive his goats to a central pen, get the correct number of goat-tokens (identical to the number of actual goats he had), and hit the trade-marts of Ur, Lagash or Nineveh and haggle for his best deal.  In time, the Sumerians had a token for every item traded in their economy -even

Wait- where's the top-hat? --or the car?
--or the flatiron or the doggy, fer chrissakes?

the priestesses at Ishtar's temple got into the act (their tokens were pussy-shaped because of what they traded).  Just so long as somebody remembered to occasionally feed and water the actual goats, the goat-tokens, wheat tokens, wool tokens and pussy tokens made buying and selling stuff in Sumer a whole lot easier.

Still, the Sumerian token system wasn't quite the same thing as money, because the goat tokens could only get you goats, wool tokens only got you wool, etc.  It took a lot of time to come up with real money, and in the end, it wasn't the Sumerians or any of their relatives that did it.  But before I tell you who did it and when, let's first discuss what exactly money is and what it does.

"That's easy, Ex-Proff!  Money is that stuff the bank gives you when you cash your unemployment check!"  True, but I was thinking of a more complete discussion.  Money is a medium of exchange.  That means that one can get anything with money (except for Love, according to the Beatles song, "Money Can't Buy Me Love")  Don't believe me?  Get 250,000 dollar bills and 125 pennies, and go buy yourself a new house and a pack of gum with it.  You can do this.  You can buy a dog, a skyscraper, the air rights above it and the mineral rights below it, and the dog-park next to it so your dog can run around and play with its doggy friends.

The meal price went up since the 1970's,
but not the salary of the guy who made it.

Money is also a way of storing value.  Houses fall apart, dogs die, minerals get mined and air rights vanish into --thin air?  --but money retains its value.  Sure, currencies fluctuate in their value due to the market forces of supply and demand, inflation and deflation, gravity and the number of "likes" on FaceBook (ok, maybe not gravity), but money can still be used to buy it --only the amount changes.

Finally, money has an intrinsic value.  While the ten dollar bill in your pocket is made of ink and paper that together is worth much less than a dollar, a ten dollar gold coin from 1879 is worth about $691: the worth of the gold itself, plus the worth of the coin to coin collectors.

So, who invented this wonderful stuff called money?  It was the Lydians.  "Who the heck were they, Ex-Proff?  A girl named Lydia used to date my roommate's brother Daryll.  Was it her?"  Uh, no, the Lydians lived in present-day Turkey (which they called "Lydia" because they couldn't speak Turkish) around the 500 BC's.  They were major trade partners with the Phoenicians, who had been trading grain, dyes, olive oil, wine, adult novelties and cheap imitation Egyptian knick-knacks (the Phoenicians lived in modern-day Lebanon but called it Phoenicia because they weren't all lesbians).  Because of all that trade flowing through their country, the king, named Croesus, had one of his smartest pointy-heads come up with this little gem: the coin.

Croesus picked the lion-eating-a-goat motif over the pretty-ponies-and-rainbows
motif because fuck-yeah, Croesus had a pair of iron cojones

Strangely enough (or who didn't see THAT one coming), this new invention made Croesus the richest king in the entire ancient known world because HE  EFFING  INVENTED  MONEY and whenever he ran out of it he just MADE  SOME  MORE.  He was so stinking rich that he became famous for just being rich.  How wack is that: being famous for being rich?  Wow, people were really dumb back then.  There's NO way something like that would ever happen in today's modern world!

I dated Croesus.  He's hot.

This kind of ticked-off Croesus because he did a lot of stuff besides being rich that he was really proud of, stuff like being a king of an entire country, taking credit for inventing money, fighting wars and even winning a couple times.  But no, all anybody ever wanted to hear about was the money-thing: how much do you have?  --where do you keep it?  --what are you going to do with it?  --can I borrow some?  --I have this great business proposition I want to tell you about, if you could just spare me a moment of your time.  You get the picture.  The important thing about Croesus' invention is what happened to it later: everybody else used it, and I do mean everybody.  Greeks, Romans, Parthians, Bythnians, Numidians, Mauritanians, Egyptians, Samaritans --even the Jews!

You know, I really think this money thing could be big...

Throughout history, money got some updates and improvements --paper money, national currencies, non-precious metal coins --but has basically remained something ol' King Croesus could recognize and know how to use.  Until now.  Today, money is in danger of going extinct, with the advent of bitcoin, debit cards and various non-monetary negotiable instruments, like credit default swap certificates and commodity future options.  And 7-Eleven stores.  And passenger airlines like JetBlue.

Here's the deal: money can be counterfeited, lost, stolen, and used for illegal transactions like buying drugs, unregistered handguns or prostitution, all things governments hate (yeah, right!)  Another thing that governments hate about cash is that it's really hard to tax transactions conducted in cash, because they have to hope the buyer or seller report the transaction and pay the tax on it.  And so this type of thing is happening: cash is no longer accepted, or its use is viewed suspiciously.  7-Elevens won't accept 50 or 100 dollar bills, because convenience stores are always getting robbed and the Middle Easterners who own those stores don't want to lose a bunch of money to robbers.  Airlines don't accept money for drinks because the flight attendants were either stealing it, losing it or never having enough change for the douche-canoe in 14-A who paid for his Sprite with a c-note.  And every transaction in cash of $10,000 or more must be reported to the IRS.

Negative, he's just a harmless nut who wants to spend his money.
Roger, I'll hit him up for a campaign contribution.

But here's the OTHER deal: every bill printed in America has this little note written on it: "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private."  So that means that Bhadjee at the LateNight Mart and Aimee at JetBlue are breaking the law when they refuse to take my real, non-counterfeited U.S. currency, right?  I actually researched this question the last time I saw President Obama- I asked one of his Secret Service dudes (who were getting paid by my taxes to essentially keep me as far away from the President as possible and still be in the same gymnasium as him) if they thought it was illegal and he said, "Probably."  There you have it: a guy who works for the Treasury Department said it might be illegal to not take money for stuff you want to buy.  So EAT  IT, Bhadjee and Aimee!!!

Seriously though, I think this is a great lawsuit waiting to happen.  All it would take is to have some shlub denied the opportunity to spend his or her money, and then they could sue the pants off whatever company denied them.  I would do it in a heartbeat, except I have no money to pay a lawyer.  Or to pay the filing fee.  Or to make the original purchase.  Which is why I am accepting donations through this blog --just don't send cash, please.

Conventional Wisdom

Bueller? Anyone? Anyone?

Earlier this week, a friend posted a link to the movie by Robert Reich, Inequality for All.  Here's PBS' take on it: Reich.  All this got me to thinking: has the American Republic finally run its course?  Is it time to hang up the Stars 'n Stripes and tell everyone to go back to the countries their grandparents emigrated from --all that is except for the Native Americans, because that would just be silly!  Time to hang a "Closed" sign beside the Golden Door?  Well, I for one don't think so, at least not yet.  There's still one more tool in our toolbelt --one last arrow in the quiver our Founding Fathers bequeathed to us.  I am referring to, of course, the Constitutional Convention.

But wait a minute there, Ex-Prof!  I hear you cry.  There has already been a constitutional convention back in 1789, and it gave us the wonderful government we have today.  Besides, if anything ever goes wrong with the constitution, we can pass amendments to it and don't have to scrap the whole thing.  Well, to that I say that our present form of government might have worked well enough for an elite-lead, semi-slavery dependent European society perched on the eastern coast of North America in the 18th century, but too much water has flowed under Concord Bridge between then and now.  And amendments are not suited to such a fundamental restructuring of power as will be needed this time.  Besides, our Founders would be flabbergasted, if they were around today to flabb and gast, when we tell them there hasn't been a Constitutional Convention since the one they had.

One friggin' convention in over 200 years?!?  You lazy poops!

We need a new government, one that realizes that there are things like typewriters, telegraphs, this doohicky called the Interwebs or something like that --improved means of communication that can make us a much more participatory, real, actual democracy.  We also need a government that will safeguard those freedoms our founders saw as sacred, freedoms that indeed are sacred.

First, let's get the law down straight.  Article V of the U.S. Constitution states in part:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress  
Italics added.

What this means is that the several States of the United States (2/3 of them, to be exact) can cry "Shenanigans!" on the whole federal government, call a convention like the one pictured above, and set up a brand-new government.  Oh yeah, and then get 3/4 of the states to ratify it.  Sound difficult?  Well, it's supposed to.  Founding Father Thomas Jefferson wrote in his little pamphlet, the Declaration of Independence, that "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes;" to this end, he and the original bunch in Philadelphia made it hard to add amendments and call new Constitutional Conventions --they didn't want us to turn into something like Italy became after WWII.

For the record, the slave's name was Sally Hemings,
not Prudence.  I don't recall any slave named --wait,
what?  I appear to have misspoken.  Y'all go back to
reading this fine blog.

But having a new convention would be scary, Ex-Prof!  What new kind of total buggery-factory-of-a-government would result from such a convention? Why can't we just let Congress, the President and the Courts fix things, just like they've done all this time?  Why rock the boat?  Why fix what isn't broken?

First of all, it just might be scary, especially if the proceedings are shrouded in secrecy just like the first convention was.  But if it's televised, the whole thing could become the reality-show-to-end-all-reality-shows and just might make C-Span bigger than HBO. Why not steal a bit from American Idol, Dancing with the Has-Beens and The Real Housewife Pawn Stars of Duck Dynasty: if the convention gets hopelessly deadlocked on an issue, such as how many parking spaces a Senator is constitutionally allowed within walking distance of their office, then they could open the phones and allow America to vote.  So yeah, it might be really exciting instead of frightening.

What kind of new government would emerge?  Be buggered if I know.  I can tell you that the government that emerges from the new convention would be acceptable to at least 3/4 of the state legislatures, which means it would be acceptable to roughly 3/4 of voting Americans, so at the very least it would have an approval rating higher than the federal government enjoys today.  Oh sure, there will be the discontented --Patrick "Give me Liberty or Give me Death!" Henry hated the first convention, and (I totally swear I am NOT making this up) the entire state of Rhode Island  boycotted it because somebody made a crack at how short Rhode Islanders' post-colonial schlongeroos were.  I suspect it was Alexander Hamilton who said that.  Also, Rhode Island was in a general sulk after the Revolution anyway.  Their entire state government was dominated by these ultra-radicals who pushed their agenda of having a simple, uncomplicated state of rural pastoralists and hearty fisher-folk, completely ignoring their neighbors in what would eventually become the United States of America, and take their place among the independent nations of the world.  

So yeah, don't expect the KKK, Idaho survivalists or the Westboro Baptist Church to be on-board with the new government, but at least there's a chance that fewer rational people will be against it.

"The Ocean State" because "The Tiny Suspicious State full of
Tiny Guys with Tiny Little Dicks" wouldn't fit on the sign.

Asking Congress, the President and the Courts to fix the problems with our present federal government is not such a good idea.  I suspect that they would all secretly like to quit or run the whole sorry business into the ground and then collect unemployment (from whom they would collect is unclear at the moment) --didn't Congress shut the government down a couple of times just recently?  Besides, asking government to fix itself is completely dumb.  I mean really, if somebody came to your company and told it to fix all the problems, even if it meant firing everybody and starting all over again back in the Stone Age, my guess is that everybody from CEO to janitor would say, "No problems here!  Everything is awesome!"  (ha ha, that stupid song from "The Lego Movie" is now bouncing around inside your brain, isn't it, bwa-ha-ha!!!)

Now on this question of rocking the boat and fixing what ain't broke: the only reason that the Ship of State is not on fire is that it sank sometime early in George "Dubbyah" Bush's first term and nobody really saw it.  We were too busy watching the Twin Towers fall and then searching for weapons of mass-destruction in Iraq to notice.  Case in point: Congress can't pass a law fixing immigration, so they instead grumble about impeaching the president for "failing to secure the borders" --is this a high crime, or a misdemeanor, as required by under Article II? --and THIS president has deported more illegal immigrants than any president before!  Oh, and all the courts are saying about illegal immigrants is that there are too few lawyers to represent the potential deportees, so they're holding deportation hearings in RFK Stadium now.

No caption needed

So, with all the free time you have now that you're out of work, or because the miserable job you have managed to somehow hang onto has now reduced you to part-time so they can stop paying your health benefits, you can pester your state legislature and its legislators to do this: call for a new constitutional convention!  And while you're at it, get yourself appointed to your state's delegation to that convention to make sure that a) nothing underhanded goes on; and b) you have a job for however long it takes to give this country a new government.  One that works.  And that isn't in the pocket of big business.  And that smells nice.  Ok, it doesn't have to smell nice, but it does have to have good hair.  And be fair and just and all that good stuff.

Christmas: Yet Another Pagan Holiday Hijacked by Christianity

On this fourth day of Advent, let me first wish you all a Merry Christmas (get over it Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, and Disciples of the Cool and Mildly Miraculous Stevie Shumway), and second, completely destroy your pine-scented, holly-decked, carol sound-tracked world by informing you of this inconvenient truth: Jesus Christ wasn't born on December 25th --he was born sometime in the early spring (say, late February/early March).  And, if Constantine the Great's mother got this one right, the manger wasn't in a nice, well-kept barn, but a dirty, nasty little cave-like animal shelter.

I don't recall the particulars, because I had
JUST BEEN BORN, dumbasses!

For proof of this monstrous assertion, let's go right to the New Testament (King James edition-get over it Megga-Churches, 7th Day Adventists, UCCers, Mormons and  Disciples of the Cool and Mildly Miraculous Stevie Shumway):

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.  Luke, 2:8

Remember that the shepherds were the first bunch of people that the Angels told about Jesus' birth, and that they actually showed up before the Magi (who got there TWO YEARS LATER, weren't kings at all but rather astronomers/astrologers from somewhere in the vicinity of Babylon, and tipped-off Herod to the existence of a RIVAL KING born in Bethlehem! Wise-men, my left-one... oh yeah, Matthew, 2:1-2:12).

I'm so ashamed of myself...

So, why were the shepherds in the fields with their flocks AT NIGHT in the first place? It's because their flocks needed extra protection since it was lambing-season. Unfortunately, lots of ewes in labor attract just about every predator within 10 square miles for a tasty bite of newborn lamb.  Also, sheepdogs are useless during this time because something about the scent of a newborn lamb pushes the "wolf" button in their genetic make-up which completely overrides centuries of breeding and a lifetime of training and turns them into lamb-munchers for the night.  So if the shepherds wanted to save their new lambs, they spent the whole lambing season protecting their flocks.  Good thing, too, because if they hadn't been watching their flocks that night, the Angels' message would have been delivered to a bunch of sheep! (no, that was not a derogatory swipe at followers of organized religions :-P)  And what time of year is lambing-season, I heard you ask? Early spring, which arrives in Bethlehem around late February/early March.

OK Ex-Prof, then why don't Christians celebrate Christmas sometime around then, huh?  That's because of the socio-political realities of the first century CE.  Back then, the king's birthday (or the Emperor's birthday, if you were lucky enough to live within the Roman Empire) was a totally big deal. There were processions, games, races, burnt offerings at the temples --a real righteous bender for everyone. The leaders of the early Christian church DID NOT want ANY of this nonsense associated with Jesus' birth for two very good reasons: his birth wasn't nearly as important as his death and resurrection; and Jesus was not a mere earthly king, but a Heavenly King. To celebrate his birth with a big party would bring him down to the level of schmucks like Herod and Caesar Augustus and that crowd.

We'll have none of that tom-foolery, thank you.
And no, I'm not St. Cyprian.

 And so matters stood for a couple hundred of years, until St. Cyprian remarked in his De pasch Comp. xix, "O, how wonderfully acted Providence that on that day on which that Sun was born...Christ should be born."  What he meant by this is that by about 225 CE, those nutty Roman Christians were celebrating Christ's birth on the Winter Solstice, December 21st.  Why would they do that?  Firstly, Jesus had been identified with the sun for a long time: "the light of the World," "the Sun of Righteousness," etc., and the Winter Solstice was viewed by ancient peoples in the Northern Hemisphere as the birthday of the sun, because after the 21st, the daylight hours gradually increase. Secondly, there was already a party going on in Rome, so why not join the fun?

Excuse me, did you say party?  Yes indeed, the famous and fun-filled Saturnalia, a week of festivities that was capped on December 25th by the celebration of Sol Invictus, or "unconquered sun."  During this week, torch-lit processions filled the streets of Rome, candles were lit in all the windows after dark, domestic slaves and their master switched places for a day (I guess the commercial and industrial slaves had a day off), friends and family would visit each other and exchange little fruit-filled cookies called strenae, in homage to the Roman goddess Strenia, goddess of the new year, purification and well-being. Does any of this sound familiar?

Sol Invictus on December 25th was the climax of the week, with a huge public ritual officiated by the Emperor in his role as Pontifex Maximus, or chief priest.  After all that, Rome needed another week to clean up, sober-up and get back to work, which was concluded on January 1st when the newly elected Consuls took up their posts.

Actual rare photograph of a Roman party --not really sure
how the Asian chicks got to Rome, but oh well...

So, just like that, Jesus got his "official" birth-date: December 25th.  If you think about it, the early Church Fathers like ol' St. Cyprian and St. Maximus of Turin (the dude totally rockin' the Duck Dynasty beard above) were not only A-1 theologians, but were also a fair hand at public relations.  How better to gain acceptance by the culture at large for your little Messianic offshoot of Judaism than to adopt the Pagan's big holidays as your own --just put a mild Christian spin on it so's to not annoy the Faithful, and watch the converts roll in.  Oh sure, things did end up going south a bit after the death of Marcus Aurelius in 180, what with the ensuing persecutions, martyrs and all, but Emperor Constantine put a stop to all of that with his Edict of Milan in 313.  Which brings us to the matter of the manger in Bethlehem.

Everybody who calls themselves a Christian (ok ok, only those who are western, i.e. Catholic & Protestant Christians --get over it Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Armenian, Coptics and Disciples of the Cool and Mildly Miraculous Stevie Shumway) have a variation of this image in mind of the birth scene in Bethlehem:

Yup, that's it.

It's all there: the stable, manger, Mary, Joseph, Jesus, some shepherds, their sheep, an ox, a donkey, a wise-man, a couple of angels and the star.  As discussed supra, cancel the wise-man because that lot showed up two years later.  Cancel the angels, because according to Luke 2:15, after the Angels appeared to the shepherds, they flew back up to heaven.  But most importantly, cancel the stable, because of this little lady right here:

Hmmm, now if I were the True Cross,
where would I be?

History knows her as St. Helena, but to me, she'll always be Constantine the Great's mom.  Forget the famous son; forget the fact that she lived into her eighties in an age where the average woman's lifespan was the ripe ancient age of 28; forget even that she somehow not only managed to find the exact same cross that Jesus was crucified on a mere three hundred twenty years later (and bring it home from Jerusalem to Constantinople in her carry-on luggage).  Her biggest claim to our attention today are the two churches she founded in Palestine: the Church of the Ascension and the Church of the Nativity.

St. H got all this started after her trip to the Holy Land in 324, where she was able, with the help of the locals, to find all kinds of stuff, such as:
a. where Jesus was born
b. where Jesus was crucified
c. which bakery had the best humus

Now, some cynics out there are probably thinking, "Yeah, right: the locals saw this rich, pious old lady looking for early Christian stuff and sold her anything they could pass off as the original article."  While that may be true, let me remind you that some amazing stuff has been discovered by complete amateurs (Hiram Binghan and Machu Pichu, Heinrich Schliemann and Troy), so why not St. H?  Besides, what's really important is that through her diligent research, we are more than pretty sure that the real Nativity Scene looked more like this:

Kind of nice and sung --and really, really smelly!

That's because we know from the Gospel of Luke that Joseph and Mary were in Bethlehem for Caesar Augustus' tax-enrollment-thing (and you thought the roll-out of the Affordable Health Care website was a mess --just imagine the whole friggin' Roman Empire on the move just so that the locals could be registered for tax purposes!) and all the inns were full-up, so they had to take what was really just a cave at the edge of town that the locals were using as kind of an improvised animal shelter.  And give birth to the savior of the world. With no family or midwife attending.  Her first child.  And these weren't even the BIGGEST miracles this kid is connected to!

St. Francis and 3 parishioners

Oh, and the whole barn-thing? Thank St. Francis of Assisi for that.  Yup, the same saint that brought us the Franciscan Order; the same saint who preached his sermons to the birds and cute, furry little animals.  You see, Francis was having a hard time getting the whole idea of the incarnation across to his parish, mostly because they were ignorant farmers, so he did the one thing guaranteed to work: he put on a play!  He grabbed some animals, dressed a bunch of his monks up as shepherds, Magi, angels, Joseph, convinced a lady of the parish and her baby to play the part of Mary and Jesus, THEN shoved the whole cast into a barn, and voila!  

Not only did his congregation "get it," but his little Christmas tableau was copied all over the Catholic world until it became the unofficial official version of what happened.  Nobody, but NO-body could hold a candle to St. Francis in the persuasion department!

So, Merry Christmas!  And if you liked what you read about December 25th and the Nativity scene, then stick around for the next blog entry where I take on Christmas trees and Santa Claus!

Ya Say Ya Want a Revolution?

Today's post (the first one as Ex-Prof!) is all about revolutions and how they're usually democratic, except when they aren't.  But first, let's define our terms: a revolution in this sense is an overthrow of the existing political power structure in favor of a different power structure.  This means that I don't mean "revolution" in the same sense as "Industrial Revolution" or that giant of professional sports, the New England Revolution soccer team (sorry if I offend both of their fans). The reason I'm interested in revolutions today is because I was listening to a couple of talking-heads on NPR Radio (NPR: No People-listening-to-this Radio-show), complaining about the ongoing revolution in Egypt.  Specifically, there was much hand-wringing over the fact that the Egyptian military and 97.33% of the Egyptian people were sick of the Muslim Brotherhood D-baggers they had elected (just after they had thrown out their last dictator), so sick of them that the Egyptian people had told the army to arrest the president, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, and some guy named Hakim who was just hanging around Tahrir Square trying to sell t-shirts that said, "Come See the New Egypt: No More Pharaohs Around Here!"

"Don't worry, Hakim -Egypt has democracy now!"

You see, Talking Head #1 was sad that a democratically elected government had been overthrown by the army; and Talking Head #2 was angry that anybody was feeling sorry for the Muslim Brotherhood, who were a bunch Taliband-wannabees that wanted to impose strict Islamic Sharia law on an otherwise secular society, so good riddance to bad rubbish.  That got me to thinking: just what is a revolution in the first place? --are revolutions compatible with democracy? --are all revolutions, to some degree or other, democratic?  But most importantly: what designer-wear looks are today's hottest revolutionaries sporting this year?

I am so totally for whichever rebels she's with

In the beginning (shortly after Pangea broke apart), rebels and rebellions didn't usually fare too well.  They were generally ordinary farmers who were sick and tired of putting up with whatever brand of authoritarian rule was being dished-out, armed with a few tricked-out farm tools, and going up against some ancient king's armed and trained soldiers.  And the results were predictable: defeated, enslaved peoples, flayed human skins, piles of skulls --the whole horrible scene.

The first successful revolt recorded by history was in about 2380 BCE (Before Calcium Emulsified) when the Sumerians of Lagash got rid of King Lugalanda and installed King Urukagina in his place.  Turns out that the big U was quite the reformer.  However, the Lagashians were still stuck with a king at the end of the day (democracy, communism and buggerocracy hadn't been invented yet), so how much of a revolution was it?

However, it's important that the people of Lagash --and not a rival city-state --were at the heart of the regime change, thus making the first successful revolution a popular one, if not a democratic one.  Between 2380 and 508 BCE (Because Cats are Excellent!), there were a few coups and military takeovers, but not a whole lot of popular involvement until the people of Athens, Greece took up arms against tyranny --and won!

I am so effing-smart --and aristocratic.

It seems that a real tyrant, Peisistratus, started out ruling Athens in the name of the people, but let the power go his head and turned into a colossal dick-weed.  There was nothing left for it but take it to the streets and hunt down Peisistratus and his supporters.  After the bloodletting and pottery-smashing stopped, the Athenians all took a collective deep breath, had a slug of wine and a few olives, and turned the whole problem of what to do after a successful revolution over to the smartest man they could find, an aristocrat named Cleisthenes.

What Mr. C. managed was a complete restructuring of Athenian society.  You see, before Cleisthenes there was another reformer named Solon (reputably smarter than Cleisthenes) who prevented a revolution by organizing society around the lines of a military unit.  At the top were the chiefs.  Anybody could be a chief, as long as their annual income was worth 500 bushels of wheat or more (Athenians liked wheat so much that they often used it as a currency.  Poly want a cracker?)  Next came the equestrian class, anyone whose annual income was 250-499 bushels of wheat.  This was supposedly enough bread --err, cash to keep a cavalry horse and rider in the field.  Next came the thetes, which is Greek for everybody else.  When not at war, this society actually got together and voted on civil questions, such as how much should we pay the Athenian dung-haulers (this was way before septic systems) or what to do with the colonies of feral cats infesting the local temples (the Ancient Greeks were not acquainted with Chinese cuisine).  Great system, right?

What's wrong with rule by Mafia?
It works for me...

The problem was that the people voted in tribes --that is, they all voted in political units dominated by a powerful extended family and its allies.  This meant that the most powerful families --there were 6 of them --could control the government of Athens and ride roughshod over everyone else.  Think of living in a state controlled by 6 Mafia families and you'll get the picture.

Enter Cleisthenes.  The thetes of Athens were on a total rampage, destroying shops, homes and killing aristocrats.  If he couldn't stop the civil unrest, Athens would become a wrecked slaughterhouse.  What he did was simple on the one hand, yet brilliant on the other: he changed the system of voting from tribes to locations (Acropolis, Agora, Harbor, Plains, Outskirts, etc.)  This broke the power of the ruling families and allowed Solon's reforms to function as a true direct democracy.  Add to it a popular assembly of all citizens (adult, male, non-slave, bisexual) and a jury of 501 citizens, and you've got the world's very first democracy.  Hooray for Athens!

Vive l'Revolution! uhmm, coup d'etat!
Whatever, vive me!

But now we must deal with with the fine distinction of just what makes a democratic, or at least popular revolution and what is just a mere coup d'etat, which is French for "Affair of State" (leave it to the French to be having affairs during political uprisings, those horny little frogs!)  With a coup d'etat, you're really just changing one ruling faction for another.  For example, when Napoleon Bonaparte got rid of France's government of the Directory and installed himself as First Consul for Life, he was merely showing the Directors the door and snagging himself some nice new office space --as well as assuming the rule of the entire country of France.  A revolution must be more: more people, more change, more time spent doing it, and more suffering for everybody involved.  This is what makes revolutions popular, and that is why so many of at least the modern ones have been democratic.

With me so far? Good; now let's turn our attention to a revolution we all know and love, the American Revolution.  My favorite Bay Stater from history, John Adams, was quoted as saying that "[the] American Revolution was accomplished long before the first drop of blood was spilled at Lexington and Concord --and that was the revolution in the hearts and minds of the American people."  By this, Adams meant that before any shooting started, the King's subjects in the part of British North America that wouldn't later go on to dominate the sport of ice hockey had gotten it into their heads that they were somehow different from your average run-of-the-mill Englishman from England.  They were, in fact, thinking of themselves as American Englishmen (to distinguish themselves from native Americans [called Indians then], African Americans [called slaves or Negros then], or Franco Americans [called miserable dirty rotten French bastards then]).

There's no friggin' way we can lose this one!
-oops, we did.  My bad.

However, Adams wrote this a few years after the successful conclusion of the American Revolution when he and everybody else in short pants, knee socks and a whig was feeling overly optimistic.  During the revolution, he wrote that the people of America could be roughly divided into thirds: one-third that was for independence, one-third that was loyal to the British Empire, and one-third that was working so friggin' hard to put a beer and a burger on the dinner table every day that they couldn't care less who ran the country --just as long as it wasn't anybody who was Catholic.  And this is where most people totally miss the whole point of the American Revolution: it was not ever, in any sense of the term, a sure-thing.  In fact, it's the best proof I can think of that God does exist and does care about what goes on around here, because by all rights, we should have lost our war for independence on at least 5 occasions: Bunker Hill, the Evacuation of New York City, the Occupation of Philadelphia, Valley Forge and the Treason of Benedict Arnold.  Each of these five pivotal points will be the subject of a subsequent blog post (good news for you Revolutionary War junkies out there!)  But it's a curious event at the end of the war, when the Continental Army was in winter quarters around Newburgh, New York, that I want to examine, because if things had gone the other way, we might have found ourselves facing the same situation the Egyptians are facing today.

"And we're all just going to stand at attention in the snow until whomever
threw that flaming bag of poop at Congress steps forward!"

The scene: Newburgh, New York (for the second time).  Previously, the Continental Army and their tre's fort French allies had beaten the snot out of Lord Cornwallis, basically ending the war, but for the fact that there were still tons of British soldiers in America and there was as of yet no formal peace treaty.  George Washington's officers had had it up to here with Congress because they had never fully provided for the army during the course of the war, making it necessary for soldiers to march without shoes, make camp without tents, and, yes, even go into battle without a musket.  In their frustration, the officers offered to make George Washington king of America.  After considering their offer for a whole three seconds, Washington politely declined, reminding everybody that they just fought a war against a king, so if it was ok with them, he'd just become the first President.

Just for a moment, let's imagine what might have happened if ol' George took his officers' offer up and became king of America.  No doubt Congress would have had something to say about that, not to mention all the pissed-off current and former soldiers who fought to rid America of kings.  So, what probably would have happened next is the American Civil War, four score and seven years earlier than it really happened.  This would have put America at a severe disadvantage vis a vis the rest of the world, prompting Britain to grab Maine, France to grab everything east of the Mississippi and west of the Appalachians, and Spain to grab Georgia.  As bad as that might be, it could have happened; only the strong character of George Washington prevented it.

Revolutions are not tidy things --those are coup d'etats --so don't give up on Egypt's revolution just yet.  They just might end up with a better, more democratic government than they used to have.  Heck, we managed it somehow.   After all, the pyramids weren't built over the weekend; nor will democracy appear over night.  And out of protests and arrests and general unrest could result in a genuine democracy for Egypt.  But whatever we in the United States must do, we must NOT interfere.  After all, the Egyptians left us to work out our differences in 1776.  They deserve the same respect.

1,000 Views of "View From the Podium" and Counting!

We passed the 1,000-viewer mark last weekend!  Yay!  I don't even care if some of those "views" were internet search engine spiders; it's up to 1,046 at this posting.  Here's a gift to you, my faithful reader: the world's largest fireworks shell (43" - the main guns on U.S. Navy battleships during WWII was only 16"!)

*BANG!*

Thanks again!

We're All Squeaky-Clean!

Friend and regular (as opposed to XXL) reader Susan suggests that in order to get lots of people to read these pearls of wisdom of mine, I should stick labels like "Justin Bieber" and "Kim Kardashian" in my blog.  Fine.  Here ya go.  And no, that noise you just heard wasn't Socrates spinning in his grave; that was Adjunct Proff smacking his noggin with a 2-by-4 over the death of intellectualism in America.  To be fair, my Mom's a big fan of "Keeping Up with the Kardashians," and I'm sure that the Bieb hasn't written only songs that suck.

Kim, on names: "Reading names is so.  Hard."
Justin, on the word German: "We don't say that in America."

Now that I have pandered to the puerile and prurient peccadilloes permeating the public's psyche (are you diggin' any of this, cute English Adjunct Proff???), on with the erudition!  During my moon-lit shower this morning at 4 a.m. (a.m.: after mooning), I took a moment to sadly reflect that not too many of us take the time for a good, long, hot... soak in the tub (shame on you dirty-minded eegits!)  Then I remembered the great Mike Stanton who once said, "Who wants to marinate in their own sweat, oil and dead skin?" --Mike was a bit on the fastidious side.  That got me to wondering about this whole bathing and personal hygiene thing in the first place, so grab your loofa and rubber-duckie, because we're going to dive head-first into the wonderful history of bathing.

"Hey, where's the babe in the other tub?  Hey, where's my friggin' Cialis?"

Nobody knows who the first human to bathe was, but it may probably have been a female homo sapiens-sapiens somewhere in Africa.  Why a female?  Well, every month she would have received her Mother Nature's Little Monthly Gift, and she probably would have washed the blood off of herself in order to present less of a target to cheetahs, lions, jackals, warthogs, meerkats and the rest of the cast of Disney's "The Lion King."  Mind you, it could also have been a male who wanted to wash away the smeared-on leftovers of the last gazelle feast for the same reason as above.  But whomever it was, they started a fad that continues to this very day.

You cray-cray if you think I can look this hot
with no bath, be-atch-ez!

Digging around in Mesopotamia, archaeologists have found clay pots that contained all the compounds needed to make soap.  Since the Mesopotamians wrote about bathing (what's the first thing Enkidu in The Epic of Gilgamesh does in order to civilize himself? --I mean after having sex with Shamash the Hooker, for an entire week?  That's right, take a bath!) and there is no record of Mesopotamians eating or drinking soap on purpose, and the men wore these elaborately coiffed hair styles and beards and so did hookers and noblewomen (only a pro can spot the difference ;-)), then there must have been some serious rub-a-dub-dub going on in and around the Tigris-Euphrates Rivers.

Egyptians were an especially hygienic bunch --then again, living so close to such a terrific river that's right at the edge of a bunch of deserts would make anybody thankful for a nice long soak.  Poetry, tomb art and weekly big box store circulars all attest to the Egyptian penchant for bathing.  Another bunch who felt that cleanliness was next to godliness (perhaps a bit too literally) were the Ancient Hebrews.  Heck, they even managed to keep clean while wandering around in the wilderness for 40 years by scrubbing with sand, ashes, pumice and clay (what else could they do with no water?) Yhwh, a.k.a. God, also reminded them to wash their hands before meals and ritual sacrifices to Him, although the source of all this water is a bit sketchy.  Supposedly, Moses whacked a rock with his staff and a freshwater spring just gushed forth.  What a lucky prick!

The Greeks reportedly used soap to get clean, and olive oil for an all-over marinade --err, moisturizer.  After a bout of wrestling, a footrace, a discus throw, javelin catch or other Olympic event, athletes would be dusted with very fine dirt in order to soak up the sweat.  A slave would then scrape all the sweaty dirt off with a curved, toothed scraper-thingy called a strigil, after which our athlete would get a massage and rub-down with olive oil.  Wish my gym did that.

Competitors ready themselves for the
Let's-stare-at-each other's-Junk event

But leave it to the Romans to elevate bathing and cleanliness to its zenith, imbuing it with religious as well as civic significance, and making the Roman Baths some of the ancient world's more impressive architectural structures.  At the social heart of every neighborhood in the Eternal City lay the baths, lavishly built and outfitted by politically ambitious men as a way of gaining favor with the publica.

Upon entering these impressive piles of marble-faced brick walls held together with that high-tech adhesive the Romans invented (cement), patrons proceeded along collonaded walkways towards the changing room, where they could ditch the old toga and sandals in favor of the even older birthday suit.  The first stop was the frigidarium, the pool that had room-temperature or colder water.  After a little swim and some shrinkage, the bather would make their way to the tepidarium, a room that had a warm water pool and tables for massages.  This was the biggest of the three main rooms, and it probably resembled the scene at a contemporary hotel's indoor pool.  The third room, or caldarium, had a big pool that was heated by a charcoal fire underneath the pool (some rather ingeniously vented to the outside by brick ductwork.  I wonder what kind of duct tape you'd use for brick), 3-4  small cold-water pools, and chairs and benches for the bather to rest in between hot and cold.  Only very fancy bath houses had something like a sauna, which was where a patron could relax to the point of wet noodledom and get a really good sweat on.

No, this is not the holodeck on the U.S.S. Enterprise (Star Trek TNG), it's a Roman Bath.  Kickass.

But were they finished after one last dip in the tepidarium and a rub-down with scented oils?  Not quite yet.  Afterwards, our Roman bathers could stroll through the bath's gardens, hear a lecture by some interesting person on some interesting topic, play a pickup game of handball (bocci would come much later), watch a performance by acrobats, or read a scroll from the bath's little library.  On-site beauty and esthetician services were also offered by skilled slaves or freemen.  One could literally stay all day at the baths!  Or, as that old grouch, Cicero writes, one could literally live over the baths:

"I live over a public bath-house. Just imagine every kind of annoying noise! The sturdy gentleman does his exercise with lead weights; when he is working hard (or pretending to) I can hear him grunt; when he breathes out, I can hear him panting in high pitched tones. Or I might notice some lazy fellow, content with a cheap rub-down, and hear the blows of the hand slapping his shoulders. The sound varies, depending on whether the massager hits with a flat or hollow hand.

To all of this, you can add the arrest of the occasional pickpocket; there's also the racket made by the man who loves to hear his own voice in the bath or the chap who dives in with a lot of noise and splashing."

Just like the hookers to ruin it for everybody

Other professional services were on offer at the baths, including that of the oldest profession (and no, it wasn't offered by my grandmother, you smartass!  I'm not THAT old!)  In fact, it was the proliferation of street-walkers around the baths that gave them a bad name in the eyes of the growing-in-size-and-political-muscle Christian Church.

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE (CE: Crap Exists now), public bathing fell out of fashion, partially because of the Catholic Church and their moral objections to it (men and women getting naked, massaged, washed by other people and being completely bare-ass naked and nude all together at the same time without any clothes on?  And naked?  I ask you: who could object to that?), and partly because LARGE HAIRY BARBARIANS had pretty much taken over all over Europe at this point, and that crowd thought that bathing was for pussies.  Just like a bully to be afraid of something like a bath!  And so, as late as 1492 we get people like Queen Isabella of Spain (yep, Columbus' queen) whose virtue was so great that she had only taken two baths in her entire life!  No word of what King Ferdinand, her husband, may have thought about this, but Columbus sailed all the way to America --four times! --to get away from her royal stench.

"In America, I found gold, and spices, and sandalwood --that makes a dandy
soap --and perfume, and douche, and body wash, and shampoo..."

But hey, Adjunct Proff-o-rama, what about the other Romans --the Byzantines?  Didn't they make it all the way to 1453?  Dude, you've been paying attention!  Gold star on the forehead for you!  Yes indeed, the Byzantines did make it to 1453, thus keeping the Roman bathing tradition alive all throughout the Middle Ages.  And when the Turks conquered Constantinople, they took a look around at the beautiful baths of that city and said, "Nice idea --but we can do it better," and voila, the Turkish bath was created.  Keeping the Roman basic design of three rooms of ever increasing temperature, the Turkish bath starts one out in the warm room, moves into the hot room which is heated by steam, and finishes out in the cold room.  Along the way, bathers get a full-body wash and a massage that is so rough that the masseur practically beats you up and shoves you in your own hip pocket.  Other treats include Turkish towels (a Turkish invention) and bathrobes that are ever so comfy, and a nice cup of Turkish tea to put the perfect finishing touch on one of the world's most pleasurable experiences.

Did I mention the pile of erotic soapsuds? 

But for the rest of the Western world not lucky enough to be conquered by the Ottoman Turks, bathing was still frowned upon.  Oh sure, there was the odd clean-freak like Queen Elizabeth I who took one bath every month "whether she needed it or not," but for the most part, Europe smelled like the Bruins locker room after one of those triple-overtime Stanley Cup games.  Europeans were SO stinky, that when the Portuguese and Dutch made it to Japan -a place that has an even more intense bathing experience than Turkey  -the Japanese were so horrified by their smell that they had to deal with those putrid people by wadding up a perfumed scrap of silk and breathing through it like a gas mask.  No wonder the Shogun kicked them all out in the 1700's!

"F*CK! The toilet paper is frozen again!"

But have no fear: all this would change in the 19th century with the discovery of germs and their role in disease.  Guess what? washing with soap kills germs by the gazillions and makes you smell good as a happy byproduct.  Soon Europeans were doing the unthinkable: scrubbing, scouring, rinsing, lathering and having a blast doing it.  And they were doing the even more unthinkable: building bathrooms inside their houses that combined the ultra clean (bath and shower) with the ultra dirty (toilet).  Prior to this, the toilet was confined to the outside in its own little house with crescent moons cut into the door.  This made it tough on folks who lived in northern climates to "do the necessary," especially in the middle of a snow storm.

Bathrooms were cropping up everywhere, even in hotels.  In the beginning (not as far back as the Big Bang Singularity), hotels would have one or two bathrooms per floor that every guest would share.  Doily Carte would have none of that.  Besides being Gilbert and Sullivan's producer, he was the major owner of London's Savoy Hotel, accommodations that boasted private bathrooms for some of the more expensive rooms.  A London newspaper of the day wondered out loud whether the guests were all amphibians.

Today, bathrooms have become a major selling point of a house --the more expensive the house, the fancier the bathrooms.  High-pressure, multi-spray shower stalls, jacuzzi tubs, bidets, urinals, heated floors and heated towel-bars are just some of the fixtures homebuyers can expect in the bathroom.  What people in the west can't expect is a public bath in the neighborhood.  While there are exceptions in New York and San Francisco, the public bath has gone the way of the dodo-bird. These days, there are day-spas, regular spas and municipal swimming pools filling in the gaps made by the lack of public baths.  So the next time you head off to Napa for a weekend of wine tasting, mud-wraps and cucumber slices on your eyes, take a moment to reflect on the long and squeaky-clean history of bathing.  But take care you don't slip on the soap!  Statistically, more household accidents occur in the bathroom than in any other room.

Who could take a dump in this beautiful bathroom?

69 Page Views short of 1,000!!!!!

Hooray!

I had no idea that almost 1,000 people in the world would read my writing, so here's to you wonderful readers out there: thank you!  I really hope you've enjoyed it, and either learned something new or were surprised by something in "View From the Podium."  I will continue to publish it until the NSA discovers my connection to the Anonymous Computer Hacker-Avengers, Julian Assange and Edward Snowdon (not to mention Mao Tze-Tung and Doctor Who!) and sends me scurrying towards Ecuador as well (Ecuador: when Venezuela or Cuba just won't do).

Thanks again, and keep your eyes peeled for a treat when I hit 1,000 :-)

xoxo, Adjunct Proff

Q: What's Adjunct P's favorite number?