Concerning Hobbits

      I was among many people who were chomping at the bit for Peter Jackson's first of three films of the iconic story to finally hit the theaters.  I was in no way disappointed either.  I thought it was great, from the opening scenes of the destruction of Erebor to the last scene where Thorin realizes the value of Mr. Baggins.  Waiting for the other films is going to be difficult.  I want to see them now.   
      Another movie I liked was the Avengers (which after watching I had to watch all the other films in the series again - Iron Man 1 &2, The Hulk, Captain America, and Thor).  The interactions between the various egos of the superheroes was entertaining.  I laugh every time I see the scene where Iron Man/Tony Stark calls Hawkeye "Legolas."  The Whole scene where Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow is tied to a chair being interogated also makes me laugh.  The bad guys get a phone call, and puzzled, they say to her, "It's for you."  They put the phone by her ear, she tell the caller "not right now, I'm interrogating these guys for some vital information."  The bad guys look more puzzled, and then she proceeds to kick their butts, break from the chair, and kick some more butt, all the while still holding the phone under her ear.  Cobie Smulders did well too in her role - quite a difference from her regular role on a TV sit com.
      Jack the Giant Killer was a great take on an old story from the world of the Brothers Grimm, actually it was a combination of two old, classic stories.  Modern CGI and other special effect just made all those images come alive that I had in my head as a child listening to my mother, or grandmother reading them to me.  That was the same for the Hobbit or any of the Peter Jackson films of Tolkein's stories.
      I like movies like this - action, sci-fi, fantasy.  Unfortunately, the movie critics usually don''t.  In fact they usually stick their noses up at movies like this and say bad things about them.  In his defense I will say that Roger Ebert (R.I.P) wasn't usually like that.  He didn't slam a film just because of its genre.  The average critic though, like the ones that have a weekly report on MPR hate films like this.  They hate the genre, and then say things like, "It was so boring, because it was so predictable (of course it was predictable - this story has been in print now for almost 80 years [The Hobbit] and the Grimm stories have their roots going back many centuries to the Black Forest of Germany) the bad guys do bad things, and after a few troubles the good guys go and defeat them.  Way too predictable."  Then they say something about being bored to tears watching it and wishing they had their two hours back.  Then they go on to talk about the movies they did like, and by their description, they are movies I would never want to watch.  ""The Spit Cup" was set in Victorian England an is about a house servant for a rich, old Lord and head of a university board of regents, whose job it is to follow the old man with a cup to catch his drool, because the old man had a condition that caused him to drool all the time.  And the spit cup itself was a metaphor for humanity and the struggle for......"  ENOUGH!!  There's no way I would ever watch that.  Okay, so that movie isn't a real film.  I just took it from an old SNL skit with Michael Palin from the mid 70's, but the films the critics like to watch are surprisingly like this.

      Now concerning Hobbits.  Archeologists and paleoanthropologists got all excited a few years ago when the found the remains of the Flores Man in south east Asia.  They were a people about 3 1/2 feet tall who lived in caves and hunted Komodo dragons.  In time they found that these people were not homo sapiens at all, and some skeptics said there was something wrong with the bones and how they all fit together.  Then everyone's visions of a paleolithic Hobbiton and Bagshot Row with Bag End just disintegrated.
      So why doesn't anyone ever do a report about the people of Khirokitia.  They were a people living on Cyprus during the Neolithic.  Their houses were round (not their doors) and were dug into the ground (but only a few feet as a foundation).  And the people were very short.  They have changed the web page since I first visited it, but their height used to be measured in mm.  I wrote it down in my notes then and it was 152 mm for females, and 164 mm for males.  We Americans don't do well with metric measurements so I had to mark it out on a doorway.  These people were very short.  They have since changed the page, as I said, and now the heights of the people are measured in inches, but the new measurements are about 6" taller for each.

      Their houses were really small too.  They were between 1.4 m, and 4.8 m across.  You would have to be tiny to fit in there.  They were cylindrical in shape with domed roofs.  They were made of cut stone and white washed over with plaster. 
       And just like the people of the Shire, these people were also farmers.  Their farm implements have also been found in the excavations. 
      So here's a society of people who were all very short, and they were truly and undeniably human.  They liked the pastoral life, just like the Hobbits.  I wonder if they liked the "pipeweed," or if they brewed some kinds of ales.  I'm sure though that they didn't dress in Georgian period weskits.  These weren't a bucnh of non-human rock throwers, whose very existence is disputed.  These people really existed, and were really a race of human. They really were Hobbits as close as the definition can come (do you think they had hairy feet?)  . 

The Krypton Principle

Science Fridays

      I see that I have a wide variety of readers from several countries.  I will therefore lay some groundwork rules concerning science before continuing with today's story.
      1.  True science is based upon observable fact.  Filling in gaps is nothing more than just supposition - in other words, technical guessing.
      2.  A hypothesis is an educated guess, usually based upon available data.  In layman's terms it is part of the scientific process where one says, "I have an idea."
      3.  A theory is a well tested hypothesis, or a hypothesis that has been calculated as far as possible with all available data.  Layman's terms again; it is a well tested guess, but still in all it is only a guess.
      4.  A scientific law is a theory that has been proven correct.  It must always show the exact same result with absolutely zero variability no matter how many times it is tested.  A simple example is the law of gravity.  no matter how many times you let go of an apple or a pencil it will drop.  The 2nd law of thermodynamics is another example.  It states that all things move from a state of order to a state of disorder.  Hot water and cold water both poured into the same tank will become luke warm.  Things do not naturally improve, but rather will degrade over time, and orderly arrangements do not arise out of chaos, but rather orderly arrangements become chaos. 
      Make it a point to keep these basic things in mind whenever you read a scientific report.

      Nuff said on that.

      This story is a sort of follow up on last week's Science Friday.  Astronomers get excited whenever they think they find evidence of an extra-solar planet.  If you were to look through the earlier entries in the archive of NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day web site, you would see that as late as 2003 any extra-solar planet they thought they had found could not really be confirmed.  As of today there are several that they are fairly certain of.

 Artist's Rendition - this is not a real photo!

      One of the planets that has them very excited orbits Gliese 581.  Gliese 581 is a red dwarf star, about 1/3 the size of our sun.  They think there are anywhere from three to six planets orbiting the star.  Being much smaller in mass its planets' orbits are also much smaller.  Their orbits average from 3 days to 66 days.  Having years that short would make buying birthday presents and holiday gifts very expensive.  That would be doubly so on the planet they feel would be in the habitable zone.  Its orbit is only 36 days.  That means a 50 year old on Earth would be 600 years old on Gliese 581g.  One would be 66 years old there in only 5.5 Earth years.  Now that's an early retirement!  If I went there right now I could retire early, like now, and get centuries worth of back pay on on my Social Security and pension - many years before I'd qualify for it here (I gotta get that hyperspace travel figured out). 
      There's something I should warn you about though before you try to go there yourself.  These planets are huge - like jovial planet size huge.  We are talking like the size of Neptune, Uranus, and bigger.  I read someone's report about it and they said how awesome that would be, because there would be so much room to expand, before they would ever have to think about overpopulation.  Excuse me.  Expansion isn't something they should be concerned about, but rather compression.  At between 3.5 and 13.5 times the mass of Earth, gravity there would really suck (truly, not literally).  It would suck you down to the surface fast and hard.  It might even crush you.  The air would be so thick that it would be hard to breathe.  Forget getting out of breath walking up the hills of Duluth, MN, Seattle, or San Fransisco.  You'd get out of breath walking down the hills on any of the Gliese 581 planets.
   

      But then comes the Krypton principle.  According to the Superman story, the reason he and anyone else from his planet seemed so strong on Earth is because they got so strong on Krypton fighting their massive gravity.  Even their bones had to be stronger in order to cope with it.  So then, when they came here they were like superheroes.  It's the same as when our Earthlings went to the moon.  They could jump higher than any white man had ever jumped before and could kick a soccer ball the length of several football fields.  I wonder how far they could hit a golf ball, or a slapshot.  How far could Happy Gilmore do either?
      The Krypton Principle is just a theory though, at best, and is more like a crazy hypothesis.  They left out a few Laws that negate their theory.  With the average adult western male weighing in at about 180 lbs. (in their prime) on Gliese 581 planets that same man would weigh anywhere from just under 600 lbs. up to 2,430 lbs.  Just you try walking with that much weight on your bod.  Because of this the scientific law of "It Just Can't Be Done" negates the Krypton Hypothesis.  The "It just Can't Be Done" law can be illustrated like this: When I used to raise cattle, every spring when the calves were born I used to hear the same stale joke in the guise of advice.  "Right now you can lift the calves.  If you just go out there everyday and lift the calf, by the time they're full grown you'll be able to lift a full grown cow or bull.", they would tell me.  The reality, of course, is that you will eventually reach the point that "It Just Can't Be Done."  The calf will grow faster than your strength and even if your muscles grow stronger your bones, joints, and ligaments would not be able to bear the weight of the calf in a short time.  It just can't be done.
      So the real kryptonite for a dweller of Krypton would be Krypton itself.  If the right atoms accidentally got thrown into each other at a chance of 1 to 10 to the umpteen billionth power again and again, and some kind of self replicating things got accidentally made, in order to exist at all on a Gliese 581 planet, they'd have to be built like a bridge (I've heard of someone being "built like a brick outhouse" but never heard the phrase "she's built like a bridge" and I hope I never do).  
      There is something else I should say to the potential traveler to Gliese 581.  It has never been actually seen.  What they have seen is barely perceptible wobbles to the star.  From this they deduce that there must be a few planets out there (see numbers 1 - 4 above). They make all these guesses about the star system based on the interpretation of wobbles.  Maybe the star is just really old, or has an "injury from the war" that keeps kicking up, or maybe the star is just drunk. 
      So in short, we don't really know if these planets really exist, as there is no real proof.  This idea is merely a hypothesis (a guess), and a theory (a studied guess) at best.  Survival on the planet's surface would be extremely exhausting, if not impossible.  Going there and registering your age would be great for being able to retire early, but you'd go broke buying birthday presents. 

Plutonium Rediscovered

      No, they didn't rediscover the radioactive element Plutonium, the one that is a primary ingredient in nuclear weapons.  This is the same element that Kim Jong Un wants to get his grubby little hands on in as much quantity as possible so he can punish Americans for the existence of Dennis Rodman.  That's not the Plutonium that has been rediscovered. 
      Archeologists announced this week that they have discovered the Plutonium of Greek mythological legend.  No this was NOT an April Fools edition.  Plutonium was the name of the gate to Hades, or Hell.  It was guarded by Cerberus, the three headed mad dog.  Cerberus' origins most probably go back to an ancient Greek ancestor of Monsanto, but I think that's another story.  Knowing now the original meaning for Plutonium, naming one of the most dangerous elements on the periodic table after it makes total sense.  Plutonium, the gate to Hell. 

      That was the headline of the news article I read, "Archeologists Discover the Gates of Hell."  The archeologists found Plutonium in a dig in the Ancient city of Heirapolis.  They found a cave going deep into the earth beneath the ruins of a temple to Pluto, the Greek Deity of the underworld.  There were also ruins there of an pool that was probably supposed to represent the River Styx.  I wonder if they had a guy there dressed in a robe and a skeleton suit too.  

      The cave emits poisonous gasses that kills all the birds and other animals that try to go in there.  The archeologists believe that this is the reason the ancient Greeks thought they had found the "land of the dead" and built a temple over it.  They found the bones and other remnants of animals that tried in vain to enter the cave, but they didn't find the bones or anything of Cerberus.  Maybe he was down deeper in the cave in the bowels of the earth creating the poisonous gasses.  A diet of wayward souls is hell on the digestive system.  This gives new meaning to the term "bowels of the earth." 
      This discovery is great for a number of reasons.  Now we know where the gates of hell are.  It's not in Washington DC underneath the White House, nor is it in the UN headquarters.  When somebody at your place of work says, "this place is hell."  you can confidently tell them, "No, it's in Heirapolis."  And if you want to tell somebody to go there, show them a picture of it from Google Earth, and give them directions with Map Quest. 

      You can read the related story if you want to.  Some things are too weird for even me to make up. 

From the Foolishness of Self-Appointed Ambassadors, Oh Lord Deliver Us

      The above line is a variation of the Anglo-Saxon line concerning the Vikings after their raid on Lindisfarne.  The actual quote is "From the fury of the Norsemen, Oh Lord deliver us." You might wonder what the connection could be between self-appointed ambassadors and Viking raiders.  Well they are both devastating to our way of life, they both do way more harm than good, and oftentimes they are both hairy and smelly. 
      One specific self-appointed ambassador I'm thinking of right now is "The Worm, The Bad Boy", Dennis Rodman.  Maybe, just maybe some of you have been wondering the same thing.  What the heck did he do or say while he was over there in North Korea?

      The Bad Boy isn't the first to put on airs thinking he has some great gift as an ambassador, and unfortunately he won't be the last.  He is only the most recent.  One of the notable ones of modern history was Billy Carter.  Unlike Rodman, Billy at least had a flimsy basis for his ambassadorship delusion.  He was President Jimmy Carter's brother. 
      Billy was a continual embarrassment for the President.  He was always being seen publicly getting totally sloshed on beer or hard liquor.  He even got a new brand of beer named after him.  He got a ticket once for peeing on an airport runway, and he went to Libya to visit Jimmy Carter's first arch nemesis Moammar Qaddafi.  It wasn't long after Billy's "ambassadorial" visit that the US got into a military scuffle with Libya.  Some people got captured, and there had to be a rescue.  During the rescue we lost a couple choppers that collided into each other.  This was also an embarrassing moment for President Carter.  Fortunately for him people soon forgot about Billy and the Libya fiasco.  Unfortunately for him and 50 people in the Iran Embassy the reason they forgot about it was because a revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini took those 50 people as hostages for the remainder of Jimmy Carter's presidency.  But hey, at least most people forgot about Billy!

Billy Carter

Billy appearing on "Hee Haw"

 

The embarrassing brother

Billy Beer

Embarrassment or not, "They's still Family."  The President and his brother chowing down redneck style

 
      Then of course there was Hanoi Jane - Jane Fonda's very damaging Ambassadorial visit to Hanoi during the height of the Vietnam War.  I don't even want to discuss her though.  I might hit the keys too hard and break my keyboard.  All I will say is this.  Her visit was so successful that in VFW halls across the US they have little rubber urinal mats for the urinal mints that have her image on them.  Way to go Jane!

      So back to our most recent self-appointed ambassador, the Bad Boy (He also was in the Vatican as the Cardinals chose the new Pope.  He said he wants to be wherever people need help [ palm to forehead])..  What the heck really happened over in Korea?  I know, he came back and said things like "He's cool man, I love him.  We're homeys."  But how did it really go?  I find it noteworthy that he no sooner than got back from his "diplomatic mission" and Kim Jong Un is all, "we have to build a bunch of nukes and kill everyone in America!!!"
      What,... did Rodman pants him?  Did he make fun of his haircut? (like he's one to talk)  Did he pee on an airport runway?  Maybe he was just trying to help Kim Jong Un look a little more "ghetto" and adjusted his pants to half mast like the prison lover look, and it was misinterpreted as something more hideous.  It could be that the armed body guards who followed him to the airport weren't there to protect him, but to run him out of the country at gun point.  I know that would be my choice for the Rodman.

 Suddenly, there's no more smiles

      I just have one thing to say to that raging, raving mad, bat-crap crazy freak (I'm talking about Kim Jong Un this time, not Rodman).  Watch out you little pipsqueak.  In WWII Neither Hirohito nor Tojo wanted to even think about a land invasion here.  Why?  Because we are the best armed nation in the world.  As Tojo said, "everyone in America has a gun."  That's not entirely true.  Some people here are afraid of guns, and wouldn't think of owning one, but those of us who do own guns more than make up for those who do not.  We have high powered guns with scopes for long range hunting, guns that pack a real punch that are for short range hunting in the thick woods and brush, guns for birds, guns for small game and yes, guns for personal defense.  Some of us even have regular assault weapons just for SOB's like you.  And, we don't just have those guns, we're good with them.  We know how to keep our cool, pause, and take a deep breath, and make a perfect kill shot with only one bullet.  Watch out.

      During the height of the Cold War, neither the Russians nor the Chinese ever thought of invading for the same reasons.  Besides that in WWII (again) the Chinese saw first hand what an angry bunch of Americans can accomplish.  The Flying Tigers were all volunteers, and were privately financed.  They operated on their own, and were not part of the American military, and they kicked some serious butt.  They were a privately organized militia of very peed off Americans bent on revenge.  They kept the Chinese skies clear of Japanese aircraft.  You see Mr. Homey, Kim, if you get privately armed Americans mad enough, they won't wait patiently for you to come to us.  They'll take the fight to you.  They'll be all over you like Piranhas on a pig, and they'll be so driven that our own government won't be able to stop them.  Watch out.
      We are descendants of the people who got kicked out of Europe, and the Indians who didn't want them here.  We come from farmers and hunters and normally would like to live peacefully, but our buttons are easily pushed - it's in our genetics.  When our buttons are pushed - God help you.  Watch out.
      If you choose to ignore my warnings and follow through with your threats of madness, I just hope you take Rodman with you.  While you wait for a swarm of angry rednecks to take you out along with everyone you have brainwashed into thinking just like you, have a couple Billy Beers and relieve yourself on a Hanoi Jane urinal strainer. 

Yet Another Way to Fail Our Youth

      We see kids and the things they do and shake our heads.  We are constantly asking the question, "My god, what were you thinking.  The truth of the matter is they aren't.  Modern society doesn't make them think.  In fact it doesn't let them think, and anyone who will make them think is branded as cruel, and robbing them of the bliss of their youth.  Sure, we make them memorize facts for school, so they can regurgitate them out on paper for a test, but make them think about serious, life matters, and it's not gonna happen.
      Kids today are lacking in a concept of responsibility.  Many of them shirk the responsibilities they have, and don't take responsibility for their actions.  Why?  We, or rather our modern society made them that way.  They are shielded from responsibility and consequences.  I know a teacher who was let go (let's say it like it really is - he was fired) for breaking up a fight between two 6th grade students.  It wasn't because he broke up the fight - he was commended for that, but apparently he told the kid who did the attacking that he would probably be suspended for his actions.  The boy's parents and the administrative staff told this teacher that a "child" this age should not have to be made to worry or be upset over consequences.  Good bye teacher - hello future criminal.
      Modern society deliberately defers adulthood and its responsibilities.  So, when I say "kids today" I'm not talking like the old geezers who said things like this, in comparing their generation with the one they were complaining about.  It's not like The Who singing about "My, my, my, my, my generation."  By "kids today" I mean the last 130 years or so compared with the previous thousands of years of human civilization.  
      According to social scientists and social historians such as Dr. John Springhall, Dr. Harry Blatterer, Dr. L. Steinberg, and others, Adolescence was a late Victorian era invention.  It arose, they cite, as a response to the latter stages of the Industrial Revolution and its social affects.
      Two main ideas went into its creation.  One wast that certain people of the rising upper-middle classes (who were also becoming conscious of the existence and plights of people other than themselves), felt that the millennia long status quo for turning people into adults just wasn't working.  The second was suspicious and jealous women worried that the men they knew would find some young girl while working in the factories of the big city.  A third contributing factor related to the second (the invention of adolescence for females) was the high number of widows and the burden it was to care for them all.  The majority of women became widows in their latter forties to their mid fifties.
      Let's take a peek at what it was like before all that social re-engineering.  As a blacksmith, who demonstrates the craft to the public at educational, historical events I have studied in depth the apprenticeship program for blacksmiths.  A boy would usually begin his apprenticeship when he was about eight years old.  Yes, you read that right.  Eight years old.  Imagine for a moment any eight year old kid, or imagine yourself when you were eight years old and remember what you were like (oh oh, I just did that and a whole host of images of some of the absolutely stupid and dorky things I did then totally flooded my mind - maybe imagining that wasn't such a good idea).
      Like I said in previous posts, people then were truly made of something different.  This eight year old boy with his two front teeth still missing would pack up some clothes with his father and they would travel up to about two weeks travel away.  They would go to a man's house who had an adjoining blacksmith shop.  The boy would be left in a different room while his father and the blacksmith would talk.  The boy would want to get up and listen in on their conversation, but wouldn't do it, because he knew that doing so was forbidden, and children respected authority (what a novel concept!).  His father then would sign a piece of paper, and the two men would share a glass of whiskey or rum.  Then the father would come in and say good bye to his son, and leave.  At eight years old the boy had left home to go live with a stranger and learn a trade.  And he was just far enough away that he could not go wander home if he got homesick.  He would just cry, get it out of his system, and get over it. 
      During his apprenticeship the boy would have many responsibilities (another novel concept).  His primary responsibility was keeping the fire going in the forge.  He had to clean the ash out in the morning, and prepare it and have it going and hot enough to work with it by the time the master blacksmith showed up to run the shop.  In larger shops there would also be journeymen and probably other apprentices.  Depending on the situation, the apprentice  might also have the responsibilities  of keeping the fire in the home hearth as well, and might also have the duties of cooking and cleaning.  He would also have to go pick up raw steel and iron and coal for supplies and make deliveries of finished product.  He would have a place to sleep, but it might be out in the barn, or in the smithy itself.  Larger shops had a bunk house for everyone. 
      A wise apprentice would also take the time to "learn his letters and numbers" (this is what they called reading, writing. and arithmetic).  Without knowing this a blacksmith could never become a master smith and own his own shop.  Learning to read and write and do math, was not mandatory.  People didn't waste their time.  It was only taught to those who wanted to learn it.  Legally a master blacksmith had to be able to keep accurate records.  Speaking of which, in the list of possessions the blacksmith owned, he had to list all of his apprentices.  Yes, an apprentice was legal property.  If an apprentice ran away it was considered stealing, and when caught would be prosecuted and punished as a criminal. 
      Up to the first five years of a boy's seven year long apprenticeship could be spent doing these menial chores.  However, standing right there, pumping the bellows, the boy was in a prime spot to watch the blacksmith practice his craft.  The final two years, according to the contract, would be spent actually pounding the metal.  In his final couple of months he would start building a bunch of tools.  When it was all over, and the boy was fifteen years old, the master would give the boy a bucket for the tools he made, and a pack sack with a couple changes of clothing, some travel food, and travel money.  He would then be sent away to go on a journey to find another shop (hence the name "journeyman").
      He had to go someplace to learn how to make other things.  If he apprenticed with a country blacksmith he would have made farm type implements and would have had to learn the job of wheelwright as well.  His school was a real working shop with real customers with real needs, and could therefore only learn to make what the local clientele needed.  Therefore he might go to a big city and maybe a coastal city, and learn how to make the things needed by city dwellers, and things like ship's tackle.  Apprenticeships were basically the same for all the trades. 
      Nevertheless, at about fifteen years old he was on his own in the world.  He had to rent his own room and figure out where his next meal was coming from on his own.  How many fifteen year olds do you know that could pull that off with any measure of success?  Think of yourself at fifteen (oh no, I did it again, but now it's a whole other set of images of a dorky kid).  Many of these kids (who were called young men) on their own got into trouble.  Maybe they discovered alcohol (the "Nancy Whiskey"), or gambling, or prostitution, or some combination of them all.  Due to their choices they could end up in prison or even dead.  Whatever choices they made though, bad or good, they had to deal with the consequences for those choices, and these consequences were never held back. 
      Of the adult responsibilities they now had to deal with, at fifteen marriage was not one of them.  Very few fathers would allow their daughter to be wed to someone just starting out as a journeyman.  The father wanted his daughter to marry someone who had proved to be successful and maybe even owned his own home.
      "Did girls ever become blacksmiths?", I am often asked.  Yes, but it was not at all common.  A girl was expected to get married.  However, by the time a girl was eleven or twelve her parents knew if she would be too cantankerous, contentious, mouthy, or just plain cranky to be married.  Then the father would try to find her a trade, because she couldn't live at home much longer than fourteen or fifteen.  One woman in the 18th century became a very successful master blacksmith and owned several shops along the east coast of the American Colonies.
      So girls entered adulthood at about fourteen or fifteen at that time too, via marriage (and in frontier regions they could be married by as young as twelve years old - Mary, the mother of Jesus was probably about twelve or thirteen when she gave birth to Jesus).  And their marriages were usually to someone about ten to fifteen years older than she was.  After the creation of adolescence, and some subsequent laws surrounding it there was a whole generation of men who had no one to marry, as the wide age differences were no longer culturally acceptable, and girls were then married to boys closer to their own age.  That was the era of the bachelors.
      Because of the mistakes these young adults made, and the consequences of these mistakes, many people in power decided that some sort of program for apprenticeship into adulthood had to be created.  That was adolescence.  Instead of letting them go off and make mistakes that could be harmful or fatal, they were held back in a quasi childhood a few years longer, so that they could learn how to be successful adults first.  Then they could be given their full rights and responsibilities as adults. 
      What this has done over the last 130 plus years is create a whole new set of problems without ever getting rid of the old problems.  Since they are held legally to still be children, they fall to the occasion, and continue to act like children.  All we have done is delay those harmful and sometimes fatal mistakes.  Until they have to face the consequences for their own decisions they aren't going to grow up.  They can be told what decisions they need to make till the teller is blue in the face, but they need to make decisions for themselves - even if they're wrong - if the are to learn from them.  That's why some of them are shocked and angry when they have to deal with a consequence or four for the first time in their lives when they are already in their early twenties.  Parents try to shield their kids from consequences.  After they have long moved out of the house there are reports that angry mothers have gone to the place of work of their children to tell off their boss.  Some young adults are so dismayed by what the real world is, that they go into a movie theater and randomly shoot people. 
      Our youth need the privilege to experience responsibilities, and consequences.  The question is, how do you re-institute them now after so long? 

 The Poor, Abused, Little Brother

       Photography is often the poor, abused sibling of the Fine Arts family.  It is like the little brother or sister that is told by his other siblings, "You're not really part of our family.  You were dropped off at our doorstep by gypsies."  I have often been guilty of that attitude myself (with photography, not my brothers, although I did say a few things to them while we were growing up that were less than cordial - heck they'd tell you that there were times I practically tortured their poor psyches). 
      Many fine artists and art snobs say of photography that it doesn't qualify as a real, honest to goodness category of the fine arts.  They say this because photography is the media used most often to merely (their words) record events or to make portraits.  As a medium it is often forced to be utilitarian.  Pictures of toothpaste tubes, deodorant containers, and soap bottles flood our newspapers and magazines.  Daily we see pictures of presidents and other heads of state shaking hands with somebody, and pictures of mayors and governors with a shovel, dedicating some new building project. 
      Then there's all the shutterbugs who devalue the art form by overuse that borders on abuse.  They fire off hundreds of thousands of crappy pictures with their digital cameras and their I-phones faster than a semi-automatic assault weapon.  Then they post them up on Facebook and Twitter and expect us to "like" them.  This isn't a new problem, because before that people wasted our poor eyes with Instamatics and Polaroids, and before that there was the Brownie.  We've all had to sit through sessions that went something like, "and here's a picture of Uncle Ed coming up from behind the barn, ...and here's Uncle Ed picking up the bucket beside the barn, ... and here's Uncle Ed coming up to the front of the barn with a bucket in his hand, ... and here's the Spanish Inquisition."
      "I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition." 
      "Nobody expects......." and we know how it all goes from here. 
      Photography gets a bad rap.  And who then is painting to be talking such trash about photography anyway?  Before the advent of photography all that utilitarian stuff was the responsibility of painting, drawing, woodcuts, and engraving.  That's like the older brothers teasing the younger one for having to go grocery shopping with Mom, when they all had to do it when they were young. 
      Every so often though, someone comes along to break the mold and make us say, "hey you really are from the Fine Arts family and weren't dropped off by gypsies after all.  Painting lied." 
      One I just recently discovered is someone named Ladona Tornabene.  I think she might be local to up around here, because I saw her work spotlighted on one of our locally produced PBS programs.  I was truly astounded by how great her work is.  To find more of her work or even see how to spell her name correctly I had to go to the program's web site.  Then I found out that the program I watched was from almost five years ago, so I had to peruse through the archive till I found it.  Then I did a google image search to find some examples of her work. 
     She finds unique color juxtapositions found in nature.  This is no mere recording of the surrounding world.  Below are some examples of her work. 

Happy Easter: Where Did It Come From?    

Guess who I ran into today?

Where did our Easter celebration come from? 

      You will probably answer that with, "well from Christianity, of course."  This is the day we choose to set aside to observe the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  This is a very important event for Christians, because Christ's resurrection is the proof that God the Father was satisfied with Christ's payment for the sins of all mankind.  Christ had "paid in full" (Greek word - tetelesthai - means paid in full, but is often translated in people's Bibles as "it is finished" instead), and the grave could hold him no longer.  This is because he died (which is the penalty for sin), yet he himself had no sin.  For this reason his death could pay for all those who did actually sin (all the rest of us in the world).
      Today many people will go to churches to observe this.  For a lot of people this is one of the only days they ever appear in a church.  Sometimes they're called the C&E Christians (Christmas & Easter). 
      This however is the only part of the Easter celebration that comes from Christianity.  Not even the name is Christian.  In pagan Germany, they had a goddess named Oestre/Oester.  She was a fertility goddess.  The Germans stole her though.  So did almost every other culture in eastern Europe and the Mid-East.  That's because her annual festival of fertility was so popular.  Her roots go all the way back ancient Sumeria.  There she was known as Ishtar.  The people of Israel worshiped her under the Canaanite name for her, Ashteroth (and got duly spanked by God for it).  The Greeks called her Astarte, and for the Egyptians she was Isis.  The Celts who lived north of Greece at that time called her Oster.
      The Festival of Ishtar was week long celebration filled with every form of debauchery possible, and was all for the sake of fertility.  They figured that if they did many acts of fertility down here on earth, then their fertility gods would in turn fertilize "Mother Earth."  That would mean good crops, and many healthy lambs, calves, kids, and other livestock.
      It was held every year during the first week following the first full moon, following the vernal (spring) equinox.  Even the date we celebrate Easter comes from that.  That is why some years Easter and Passover are weeks apart.  This year it was only three days different, but that can be attributed to trying to have it on a Sunday.  The actual resurrection of Jesus Christ happened three days after Passover.
      During the Festival of Ishtar "being fertile" was encouraged, and the more "fertile" you showed yourself to be, showed everyone how devoted you were to the goddess.  Extra-marital "fertility" was not only excused, but was also encouraged.  This was one of the aspects of it that made it so popular across many cultures.  Marriage was no limit, age was no limit, and species was no limit (eww!). 
      During the festival people gave out gifts in baskets and ceramic vessels.  These gifts were all symbols of fertility.  They had eggs that were decorated with fertility symbols, not just innocent little zig zags and stripes.  Imagine a little kid today getting an egg and asking, "Mommy, why is there a picture of "that" on my egg?"  At least that aspect has changed over the years.  They also gave out rabbits; real living ones, little statuettes of them, and cookies and other confections made in the shape of rabbits.  A third thing they gave was statuettes and confections of billy goats that were "aroused."  These were used as part of the celebration.  So far I have tried to keep this blog clean, so I will not explain how they were used, other than to say they were used in the same way that the priestesses of Thor used his "aroused" statuettes - and they did this publicly.   I'm really glad that they dropped the billy goats from the modern form of the festivities (imagine trying to explain that to your kids).
      The Festival of Ishtar/Ashteroth/Astarte/Oster/Oester/Easter was a massive, public orgy.  What the heck does it have to do with the resurrection of Jesus Christ?