April Fool’s Day (UPDATED)

Posted on April 1, 2015 by wellsdc

As a general rule, I’m not a fan of pranks, for the simple reason that they are, almost invariably, much more fun for the prankster than the pranked. The pranked person’s enjoyment is, at best, secondary, and at worst, irrelevant. That’s not how I do humor^*.

That said, I do appreciate history and all that, so here’s a wee bit about April Fool’s Day:

The custom of setting aside a day for the playing of harmless pranks upon one’s neighbor is recognized everywhere. Some precursors of April Fools’ Day include the Roman festival of Hilaria, the Holi festival of India, and the Medieval Feast of Fools.

In Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1392), the “Nun’s Priest’s Tale” is set Syn March bigan thritty dayes and two. Modern scholars believe that there is a copying error in the extant manuscripts and that Chaucer actually wrote, Syn March was gon. Thus the passage originally meant 32 days after March, i.e. 2 May, the anniversary of the engagement of King Richard II of England to Anne of Bohemia, which took place in 1381. Readers apparently misunderstood this line to mean “32 March”, i.e. 1 April. In Chaucer’s tale, the vain cock Chauntecleer is tricked by a fox.

Pranks are hard to pull off, though, especially in the Internet Age. As Megan Garber says at The Atlantic, “April 2 regrets are, at this point, almost as common as April 1 fools.”

For more fun, “fun,” and “what the hell were they thinking?”, check out “The Top 100 April Fool’s Day Hoaxes of All Time.”

UPDATE (04/01/2015): Thanks to Edwin for directing me to this John Oliver video:

A few choice quotes:

“April Fool’s Day is to comedy as St. Patrick’s Day is to Irish culture.”

“Pranks are terrible. Anyone claiming to be excited for April Fool’s Day is probably a sociopath, because what they’re really saying is ‘I cannot wait to hurt the people close to me.'”

“If you want to break your family’s heart, don’t play a mean trick on them. Just ask them for money for another improv class. You can do that any time of year, and you will shatter them.”

* Yes, i got pranked a few times as a kid. What’s your point???

The Charleston Conspiracy (Theory)

Posted on March 20, 2015 by wellsdc

At the South Carolina National Security Action Summit, an attendee apparently stated that the Obama administration recently tried to detonate a nuclear weapon in Charleston, South Carolina (h/t Jason). The attempted nuking of Charleston is a delusional fantasy, but it’s terrifying to me that the public statement made by this person is something that actually happened.

The woman included this in a question to Rick Santorum, who didn’t do much of anything to correct her on the issue^*. It turns out that the Charleston thing has been making the round long enough to have its own Snopes page, which declares it to be false. Dave Weigel also wrote about what happened (h/t Steve Benen): Continue reading →

Four Presidents

Posted on March 16, 2015 by wellsdc

It’s not quite “six degrees of separation” (or Kevin Bacon) but the Washington Post has an interesting piece on how the entire 239-year history of the U.S. covers the lifetimes of just three former presidents and President Obama:

When President Obama was born (1961), President Herbert Hoover was still alive (1874-1964). When Hoover was born, President Andrew Johnson (1808-1875) was still alive. When President Johnson was born, President John Adams (1735-1826) was still alive. And just like that, we’ve connected present day to the Founding Fathers.

Not to say that any of these people knew each other, of course. I just find this sort of thing interesting, in a terribly geeky way.

This tidbit was also intriguing: Continue reading →

What I’m Reading, March 4, 2015

Posted on March 4, 2015 by wellsdc

Beyoncé as Gateway to Satan? The Long, Strange History of Conservative Christian Panic Over Satanism, Evan McMurry, AlterNet, February 27, 2015

Last week, a priest in Ireland blared a severe warning about a dark practice that was surreptitiously leading people to the “Kingdom of darkness” where “Satan and the fallen angels” waited to prey upon them.

What nefarious activity had so insidiously masked its agency of darkness? Yoga.

***

Spotting links between Satanism and yoga and Harry Potter is both the ridiculous result and the natural continuation of a decades-old practice of spying Satanism’s flag in the most innocuous segments of western culture, an evolving trend that functions as a map to the shifting class and gender anxieties beneath the culture wars.

What Christians Mean When They Use the Word “Atheist”, Neil Carter, Ex-Communications, February 19, 2015 Continue reading →

What I’m Reading, February 24, 2015

Posted on February 24, 2015 by wellsdc

The First Victims of the First Crusade, Susan Jacoby, New York Times, February 13, 2015

The message from the medieval past is that religious violence seldom limits itself to one target and expands to reach the maximum number of available victims.

***

Cultural ignoramuses portrayed President Obama’s references to the Crusades and the Inquisition at the recent National Prayer Breakfast as an excuse for Islamic terrorism, but the president’s allusions could and should have been used as an opportunity to reflect on the special damage inflicted in many historical contexts by warriors seeking conquest in the name of their god.

***

Thomas Asbridge, director of the Center for the Study of Islam and the West at the University of London, commented in this newspaper that “we have to be very careful about judging behavior in medieval times by current standards.”

This issue is better judged from the other side of the looking glass. What we actually see today is a standard of medieval behavior upheld by modern fanatics who, like the crusaders, seek both religious and political power through violent means. They offer a ghastly and ghostly reminder of what the Western world might look like had there never been religious reformations, the Enlightenment and, above all, the separation of church and state.

Unreconciled History: Why even victims don’t have the right to rewrite the past, Michael Kinsley, Slate, February 13, 2015 Continue reading →

What I’m Reading, February 18, 2015

Posted on February 18, 2015 by wellsdc

Conservatives Smear Slain ISIS Hostage Kayla Mueller Because She Cared About Palestinians Too, Zaid Jilani, AlterNet, February 11, 2015

26 year-old Kayla Mueller accomplished much before her death while in ISIS custody. She traveled the world, working for various international nonprofits. By all accounts, she was a big-hearted humanitarian and represented the best of America’s values abroad.

But all of that is unimportant to a group of Islamophobic conservatives who took issue with Mueller’s advocacy for the Palestinian cause – which included joining protests against the Israeli occupation.

SF/F Saturday: The Years of Rice and Salt, Adam Lee, Daylight Atheism, November 15, 2014 Continue reading →

A Seat on a Rocket Ship

Quote

Posted on January 28, 2015 by wellsdc

If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat. Just get on.

– Christa McAuliffe (September 2, 1948 – January 28, 1986)

What I’m Reading, January 27, 2015

Posted on January 27, 2015 by wellsdc

It’s Time to Debunk the Churchill Myth, Simon Heffer, New Republic, January 16, 2015

His was a political career that, apart from what happened during the Second World War, was of a length and scope that was, and remains, difficult to comprehend. Politics was in Churchill’s blood. He was a grandson of the Duke of Marlborough. His father, Lord Randolph, had been a controversial Tory MP and, even more controversially, briefly chancellor of the exchequer in the 1880s. After an undistinguished career at Harrow—which at least had the crucial effect of making young Winston realize that failure was something to be overcome and not to be crushed by—he was, following a spell in the army, first elected to the House of Commons in 1900, during the reign of Queen Victoria, and first served in the cabinet as president of the Board of Trade under Edward VII in 1908; yet he endured to be the present Queen’s first prime minister, and did not resign as an MP until the 1964 general election, held just three months before he died and a few weeks before his 90th birthday. Those facts of chronology, and the list of the great offices he held—not just prime minister, but chancellor and home secretary, among many others—further inspire the awe in which he, or rather his memory, is held, and help to create a picture of the unstoppable romance of his life.

But it is his indispensable and nation-saving achievement in 1940 that obscures so much else about him, with myth-suffocating reality. It diverts attention from all else that Churchill did before and after, and even discourages analysis of it. Worst of all, it discourages reflection on his management of the war, which, as anyone who has read the accounts of some of his closest colleagues—notably Sir Alan Brooke and Anthony Eden—will know, was much more hit and miss than conventional history usually has it. The effect of the often unquestioning idolatry with which he is widely regarded not only hinders us from evaluating Churchill properly but from forming an accurate assessment of the times in which he lived, and that he did so much to shape.

Obama would like us all to stop being such idiots, Alex Moore, Death and Taxes, January 21, 2015 Continue reading →

She Was Geeky Before It Was Cool

Posted on January 10, 2015 by wellsdc

I regret that I never got to hang out with Grace Hopper, who helped pioneer computers, and who totally and awesomely did not put up with David Letterman’s lip:

She sounds like she was an epic badass:

Rear Admiral Dr. Grace Murray Hopper was a remarkable woman who grandly rose to the challenges of programming the first computers. During her lifetime as a leader in the field of software development concepts, she contributed to the transition from primitive programming techniques to the use of sophisticated compilers. She believed that “we’ve always done it that way” was not necessarily a good reason to continue to do so.

What I’m Reading, January 9, 2015

Posted on January 9, 2015 by wellsdc

The Great Draft Dodge, James Kitfield, National Journal, December 13, 2014

During the Vietnam War, an average of 950,000 men annually had entered the military through conscription, according to a report by the nonprofit Human Resources Research Organization. The Nixon administration’s decision to turn off that spigot at a moment of defeat and vulnerability for the military was seen by uniformed leaders as a betrayal and as a purely political maneuver, designed to quell antiwar protests that had begun on college campuses with the burning of draft cards, and had spread throughout the country. If that was the plan, it worked: By eliminating the duty to serve, the shift to an all-volunteer force succeeded so spectacularly in pacifying antiwar sentiment that few observers at the time worried at what cost.

Critics of American Sniper Chris Kyle Threatened with Violence and Rape Fantasies, Hrafnkell Haraldsson, PoliticusUSA, January 4th, 2015 Continue reading →

Cryptic Philosopher

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Category Archives: History