New British currency isn't vegan.
The UK introduced new money in September of this year. It turns out that the money contains minute traces of beef fat. The currency is a form of plastic polymer, which lasts longer than the traditional...
View ArticleRepublican claims millions of illegal aliens are mostly criminals. In 1951.
Senator Pat McCarran is largely forgotten these days, but I ran across a quote that strongly reminds me of something a recent President-elect has said. In 1951 this Senator claimed that there were five...
View ArticleNY Time's Upshot in 50 maps shows how the popularity of some shows seems to...
Today’s online New York Times “Upshot” section has a fascinating study of where 50 tv / cable shows are popular, using maps of the US. Upshot suggests that the correlation of Duck Dynasty has a strong...
View ArticleDid you know the word "sinister" insults lefties??
What I’m writing about is how using some words unintentionally contributes to bias—which is different than knowingly using hateful and spiteful speech. I’ve chosen as examples Gypsies, left handers and...
View ArticleThere've been Muslims in America for four hundred years.
.There have been Muslims in this country for four hundred years. Estimates vary, but it is commonly estimated that 10% to 15% of slaves brought to what is now the United States were Muslim, and I’ve...
View ArticleLanguage and ethnic diversity is as American as apple pie. And goes back to...
Most America-firsters seem to think to be American, you should speak English. After all, if it was good enough for Jesus and God, it ought to be good enough for everybody. Those poor souls really do...
View ArticleRed State Ranchers Like the Bundy folks are Multicultural. They Just Don't...
What could be more Anglo and Trump-like America Firsters than Western ranchers like the Bundy clan? Turns out that, whatever their present is like, ranching in the West owes heavily to Mexican practice...
View ArticleGenealogical Research Can Result in some Unpleasant Historical Connections.
I had always hoped to discover some horse thieves or regicides in my ancestry. In research this past week on my family genealogy, I ran across some rather unpleasant things, in a story that has me...
View ArticleThe First Arab Visitor from Baghdad to the Americas was in 1675.
The prospect of an executive order banning visitors and refugees from several majority-Muslim countries piqued my curiosity. When was the first visit to the Americas by an Arab person? I did a little...
View ArticleSome White Nationalists May Prefer Not to Know What's Lurking in Their Genes.
Modern white nationalists tend to equate skin color with something called “race." The darker the skin color, they think, the further the race is from moral, cultural, biological, political and godly...
View ArticleWe Had a Religious Crimes Code from 1883 to 1933.
There’s concern lately about how a religion like Islam fits into American life. The present administration is strongly anti-Muslim, and some communities have prevented mosques from being located...
View ArticleIf Corporations Are Now Legally Persons, Can't Forests, Canyons or Mountains...
Large sections of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef are now dead, done in by climate change. The vaquita a unique marine mammal that calls the Sea of Cortez home, is down to perhaps thirty individuals and...
View ArticleForgotten and Potential Genocides. Old Poisons Still Have Some Potency.
Genocide remains an extremely powerful word, universally seen as criminal and its perpetrators as vile offenders against humanity. People whose ancestors or relatives underwent genocide or its first...
View ArticleWho Owns Emmett Till? Thoughts on Cultural Appropriation.
In the Arts section of the New York Times on March 28th there’s a piece by Roberta Smith in the “Critic’s Notebook” column (the online article is dated March 27). The title is “Should Art That Angers...
View ArticleWe Were a Christian Nation, Sort Of, But Rather Different Than Today's...
My intent here is to point out that contemporary image of American Christian history held by many conservatives is simplistic. The subject is huge and I can make only a few points if this is to be kept...
View ArticleLetter From the End of the Great War 99 Years Ago
While browsing through some family genealogical materials this week, I found a letter. I don't know who it is to. It’s from a musician in an Army band, named Emery Edward King, dated December 12, 1918,...
View ArticleSome Examples of the Use of Terror in American History.
My interest in gory topics like this one is not a fascination with the macabre, but a conviction that for too long anything that contradicts our mainstream narrative of what America is, has been swept...
View ArticleFollow Up to "A Letter From the End of the Great War." Emery King Lived a...
A couple of weeks ago I published a diary titled “A Letter From the End of the Great War 99 Years Ago.” To my pleasant surprise, the diary got rescued. The diary was based on a December 1918 letter...
View ArticleLoving v. Virginia. 50 Years Ago the Supreme Court Struck Down State Laws...
June 12, 2017 will mark the 50th anniversary of the case known as Loving v Virginia in which the Supreme Court found Virginia’s law against interracial marriage was unconstitutional.In 1958, Mildred...
View ArticleThe Confederate Catechism Rises Again. White Power Folks Seem to Love It.
Lyon Gardiner Tyler wrote The Confederate Catechism in 1920. The pamphlet blames the Civil War on Abraham Lincoln, and on Northern intolerance, and states that slavery was a benefit to the enslaved....
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