Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Halloween History
Halloween, a holiday celebrated on the night of October 31, is a mix of ancient Celtic practices, catholic and Roman religious rituals and European folk traditions that blended together over time to create the holiday we know today.
The scariest holiday of the year has its roots in Celtic, Catholic, and Roman festivals.
Also: The weirdest Halloween laws in the country
Halloween is a time to be thankful... that you don't live in Walnut, California.
Trick-or-treaters in that town need a permit to wear a mask. The code strictly states: "No person shall wear a mask or disguise on a public street without a permit from the sheriff," according to Idiot Laws. So before you can even plan a costume, you have to plan a visit to the police precinct.
In Belleville, Missouri, you can't even trick-or-treat if you're in high school. The mayor of the county signed an ordinance banning kids past eight grade from asking for candy. "We were hearing more and more about bigger kids knocking on doors after 9 at night, and the people who lived in the homes were scared," the Mayor told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "We believe that Halloween is for little children."
Several townships in Virginia agree, banning kids over 12 from participating in the sweet-treat soliciting.
In several towns in Oklahoma, celebrating Halloween on October 30, is encouraged this year.
Oklahoma City, Edmond, Midwest City and Yukon are all making the official day this Saturday, instead of Sunday, a school night. "We felt it was more convenient for families to do it on Saturday, and it only meant moving it one day earlier," one local Sheriff told The Oklahoman.
In Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, Sundays are off limits for trick-or-treaters too. "If October 31 shall be a Sunday, such going from door to door and house to house for treats shall take place on the evening of October 30 between the hours of 6:00 p.m., prevailing time, and 8:00 p.m., prevailing time." That last part, the 6 to 8 window of trick-or-treating, however, is upheld every year. After 8pm, the candy-thon stops, by law.
Halloween celebrations during school hours was banned in a Seattle suburb in 2004 as well as in Los Altos, California in 1995. Both grew out of religious sensitivity. In California, it was out of respect for Christian Fundamentalists. In Washington, it was on behalf of Wiccans who were tired of the negative portrayal of witches.
Don't expect to see any Grim Reaper or Blues Brothers costumes in Dublin, Georgia. It's against the law to wear hoods or sunglasses. A law states: "It shall be unlawful for any person to be and appear on any of the public streets of the city or in any of the public places of the city wearing a mask, hood or other apparel or regalia in such manner as to conceal his identity, or in such manner that his face is not fully visible, or in such manner that he may not be recognized." Thankfully, kids under 16 aren't subject to the rule.
And Marie Antoinette is off the table in Merryville, Missouri, where women are banned from wearing corsets. The age old law is designed to prevent women from denying men "the privilege of admiring the curvaceous, unencumbered body of a young woman should not be denied to the normal, red-blooded American male." But men are subject to some laws too. Like no goofy mustaches that make people laugh in Alabama churches. And male staff-members of the Nevada Legislature are banned from wearing penis costumes while the legislature is in session. There's got to be a back-story behind that one.
Trick-or-treaters in that town need a permit to wear a mask. The code strictly states: "No person shall wear a mask or disguise on a public street without a permit from the sheriff," according to Idiot Laws. So before you can even plan a costume, you have to plan a visit to the police precinct.
In Belleville, Missouri, you can't even trick-or-treat if you're in high school. The mayor of the county signed an ordinance banning kids past eight grade from asking for candy. "We were hearing more and more about bigger kids knocking on doors after 9 at night, and the people who lived in the homes were scared," the Mayor told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "We believe that Halloween is for little children."
Several townships in Virginia agree, banning kids over 12 from participating in the sweet-treat soliciting.
In several towns in Oklahoma, celebrating Halloween on October 30, is encouraged this year.
Oklahoma City, Edmond, Midwest City and Yukon are all making the official day this Saturday, instead of Sunday, a school night. "We felt it was more convenient for families to do it on Saturday, and it only meant moving it one day earlier," one local Sheriff told The Oklahoman.
In Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, Sundays are off limits for trick-or-treaters too. "If October 31 shall be a Sunday, such going from door to door and house to house for treats shall take place on the evening of October 30 between the hours of 6:00 p.m., prevailing time, and 8:00 p.m., prevailing time." That last part, the 6 to 8 window of trick-or-treating, however, is upheld every year. After 8pm, the candy-thon stops, by law.
Halloween celebrations during school hours was banned in a Seattle suburb in 2004 as well as in Los Altos, California in 1995. Both grew out of religious sensitivity. In California, it was out of respect for Christian Fundamentalists. In Washington, it was on behalf of Wiccans who were tired of the negative portrayal of witches.
Don't expect to see any Grim Reaper or Blues Brothers costumes in Dublin, Georgia. It's against the law to wear hoods or sunglasses. A law states: "It shall be unlawful for any person to be and appear on any of the public streets of the city or in any of the public places of the city wearing a mask, hood or other apparel or regalia in such manner as to conceal his identity, or in such manner that his face is not fully visible, or in such manner that he may not be recognized." Thankfully, kids under 16 aren't subject to the rule.
And Marie Antoinette is off the table in Merryville, Missouri, where women are banned from wearing corsets. The age old law is designed to prevent women from denying men "the privilege of admiring the curvaceous, unencumbered body of a young woman should not be denied to the normal, red-blooded American male." But men are subject to some laws too. Like no goofy mustaches that make people laugh in Alabama churches. And male staff-members of the Nevada Legislature are banned from wearing penis costumes while the legislature is in session. There's got to be a back-story behind that one.
How old is too old for trick-or-treating?
Some towns say they're tired of "6-foot-tall kids" ringing their doorbells on Halloween.
Also: Odds and Sods
Townspeople in Bolivia lynched a couple for allegedly practicing witchcraft even though it is not a crime in the South American country, local media reported Tuesday.
Police have charged a 30-year-old man with public drunkenness and drug possession after he allegedly tried to pay for a pizza with pot.
Police were called to a Victoria, B.C., apartment Monday night to deal with a fight over who got the bigger piece of meat at dinnertime.
Police have charged a 30-year-old man with public drunkenness and drug possession after he allegedly tried to pay for a pizza with pot.
Police were called to a Victoria, B.C., apartment Monday night to deal with a fight over who got the bigger piece of meat at dinnertime.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
The Daily Drift
The Daily Drift
Today's horoscope says:Your sign is often associated with royalty, due to your regal, royal bearing and the mantle of authority you wear so easily and so well.
So you have every right to decide who to let into your world and who to banish from it -- and that goes double now.
If there's someone who's been trying to edge their way in, don't hesitate to give them a good shove back out.
If they're this pushy to start with, imagine how they'll be a bit further down the road.
Some of our readers today have been in:
Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal
Edithvale, Victoria, Australia
Sittard, Limburg, Netherlands
Swindon, England, United Kingdom
Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland
London, England, United Kingdom
Jakarta, Jakarta Raya, Indonesia
Perth, Western Australia, Australia
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Bangalore, Karnataka, India
Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Oldenburg, Niedersachsen, Germany
Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
Antofagasta, Antofagasta, Chile
Valladolid, Castilla y Leon, Spain
Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia
as well as Puerto Rico, Slovenia, Peru and in cities across the United States such as Quakertown, Newington, Madera, New Orleans and more.
Today is:
Today is Tuesday, October 26, the 299th day of 2010.
There are 66 days left in the year.
Today's unusual holiday or celebration is:
Mule Day.
While tonight is:
Worldwide Howl at the Moon Night
Don't forget to visit our sister blog!
'Most Influential Man'
Barack Obama fails to crack the top 20 on AskMen.com's annual list of cultural leaders.
Also:
Costumes reign at gaming convention
Fans of World of Warcraft and other top games spare no expense in celebrating their favorite characters.
Also: Spectacular discoveries every 3 days
An anaconda as long as a limo and a poisonous dart frog are some new Amazon finds.
Also: The world's most dazzling caves
One cavern glimmers like Superman's fortress, while another seems to go on forever.
Also: Technological might of China showcased
A bullet train from Shanghai is the latest engineering mega-project on display.
Also: Unexpected contender for top TV network
And it has the wingnuts in spams of apoplexy
A major shift in the U.S. population threatens to leave the Big Four networks in the dust.
Also:
WikiLeaks ignored
The unveiling of a trove of Iraq files was big news, but the Sunday programs largely ignored it.
Also: While you were sleeping ...
Obama administration effectively neuters DADT
In a memorandum dated Oct. 21, Mr. Gates said that “until further notice,” only five senior Defense Department officials, all civilians, would have the authority to expel openly gay service members.
What this basically means is that five top officials in the defense department - (people who happen not to agree with Don't Ask, Don't Tell) - now have the sole authority to sign off on any and all DADT discharges.
Essentially that means the policy dies on the vine.
Cholera in Haiti: This isn't bad luck, this is poverty
Maggie Koerth-Baker writes:
Haiti, wrecked by a massive earthquake in January, is now struggling with an epidemic of cholera that has spread through camps of earthquake refugees and into the nation's capital of Port-au-Prince. Dr. Jon LaPook, medical correspondent for CBS News, has probably done the best job I've seen of describing the horrific, disgusting toll this disease takes on the human body and on the societies it moves through.
Cholera is, essentially, the worst food poisoning you can possibly imagine. In fact, it's related to Vibrio vulnificus, a bacteria that tends to infect people via undercooked seafood.
After you ingest the cholera bacteria, it'll hang out in your gut for a few days before symptoms kick in. Once they do, though, cholera can kill you within hours. How? I'll be blunt: Massive, constant diarrhea that drains the body of fluids and electrolytes and leaves victims looking like glassy-eyed, hollow-cheeked corpses before they actually are.
Nobody knows exactly how old cholera is, but, from a pop-culture perspective, it's inextricably linked to the 19th century, when several pandemic waves took cholera from its roots in the Indian subcontinent to being the first global killer—taking advantage of increased trade and immigration to strike Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas.
And it was a complete mystery. At the time, disease was thought to spread via "bad air", a pre-germ theory explanation for the patterns left by person-to-person contact. But cholera didn't seem to fit. The doctor could visit a house riddled with the disease, and walk away unscathed. And, yet, at the same time, cholera swept through whole neighborhoods—usually the poor ones—killing hundreds, or thousands.
You probably know the story of Dr. John Snow. During the 1854 cholera epidemic in London, Snow took the radical and now-laughably-obvious step of mapping cholera deaths throughout the city. He found that the outbreaks centered around nexus points, which lined up with public water pumps—specifically, the pumps that sourced their water from the downstream end of the Thames. And that's how we learned a valuable lesson. Preventing cholera is easy. All you have to do is make sure that people don't have to drink water that's been contaminated with sewage.
Today, cholera is all but non-existent in developed countries. Not because we're immune. Not because we have access to a miracle drug. It's simply about money. Money, and the will to build public sanitation systems that treat the poor and the wealthy to an equal level of separation between what we drink and what we excrete. After all, there were water services in Dr. Snow's time, but they were heavily divided by class. The wealthy drew their drinking water from upstream and dumped their sewage below that point, where it made its way to the public wells used by everybody who couldn't afford the better water.
Malaria is often what we talk about when we talk about diseases of poverty. But simple diarrhea kills more people every year. Cholera is only one part of that.
And it is all about the money. What kills you isn't so much the diarrhea, itself, but the loss of fluids and essential salts and minerals. Replace enough of those, soon enough, and people tend to survive. This is a disease that can be cured with Brawndo. (It's got what cholera victims crave!) In fact, one of the greatest public health inventions of the 20th century—and, perhaps, the most underrated—is the pre-mixed Oral Rehydration Therapy sachet—little packets containing dried mixtures of mostly sodium and glucose. Pour a packet into clean water, and you have an instant treatment for cholera. This is pretty much all that stands between a bout of cholera meaning a really bad, gross week, and a bout of cholera meaning death.
Right now, people are dying in Haiti not because we don't know how to save them, but because of a lack of access, both to clean water and to Oral Rehydration Therapy. In other words, they are dying not because of a disease, but because of poverty.
How You Can Help:
• Donate to Doctors Without Borders and help get Oral Rehydration Therapy to people who need it.
• Donate to World Vision, which does both medical work, and helps bring clean, safe drinking water to communities around the world.
• Donate to Water.Org, a charity devoted to water infrastructure projects.
Some Other, Related Links:
• Fault activity indicates that Haiti is at risk of more, and possibly larger, earthquakes
• Fascinating piece explaining how cholera can hide, dormant in a population for years, waiting for a sanitation crisis to attack
• Cholera at The Bacteria Museum
• The Climate Connection: How warming oceans can influence the spread of cholera
• Interesting information on what the toxin produced by cholera bacteria does in the human body and why it causes diarrhea
Haiti, wrecked by a massive earthquake in January, is now struggling with an epidemic of cholera that has spread through camps of earthquake refugees and into the nation's capital of Port-au-Prince. Dr. Jon LaPook, medical correspondent for CBS News, has probably done the best job I've seen of describing the horrific, disgusting toll this disease takes on the human body and on the societies it moves through.
I spoke to a middle-aged man, Robert Raphael, whose family lives between St. Marc and Gonaives. Over the past week he has lost a brother, niece, nephew, and "five or six" cousins to cholera. Five or six—he'd lost count.The bug behind this devastation—the bacterium Vibrio cholerae—is a fascinating and frustrating creature. Fascinating, because of its role in the development of epidemiology and what we're still learning from it. Frustrating, because it ought to be relatively simple to treat and prevent infection. We know what to do to help a cholera victim survive. All it takes is access to clean water and the most basic medical supplies. The trouble here isn't science, it's poverty.
They clearly need more doctors and nurses, but seemed to have enough oral rehydration solution and IV fluids for now. They obviously need specialized supplies like "cholera beds"—cots with holes cut in them for easier defecation. I asked an 8-year-old named Ritchie if it was hard to "faire toilette" in public (it's all out in the open), and he looked embarrassed and said, "Yes." That got to me.
Cholera is, essentially, the worst food poisoning you can possibly imagine. In fact, it's related to Vibrio vulnificus, a bacteria that tends to infect people via undercooked seafood.
After you ingest the cholera bacteria, it'll hang out in your gut for a few days before symptoms kick in. Once they do, though, cholera can kill you within hours. How? I'll be blunt: Massive, constant diarrhea that drains the body of fluids and electrolytes and leaves victims looking like glassy-eyed, hollow-cheeked corpses before they actually are.
Nobody knows exactly how old cholera is, but, from a pop-culture perspective, it's inextricably linked to the 19th century, when several pandemic waves took cholera from its roots in the Indian subcontinent to being the first global killer—taking advantage of increased trade and immigration to strike Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas.
And it was a complete mystery. At the time, disease was thought to spread via "bad air", a pre-germ theory explanation for the patterns left by person-to-person contact. But cholera didn't seem to fit. The doctor could visit a house riddled with the disease, and walk away unscathed. And, yet, at the same time, cholera swept through whole neighborhoods—usually the poor ones—killing hundreds, or thousands.
You probably know the story of Dr. John Snow. During the 1854 cholera epidemic in London, Snow took the radical and now-laughably-obvious step of mapping cholera deaths throughout the city. He found that the outbreaks centered around nexus points, which lined up with public water pumps—specifically, the pumps that sourced their water from the downstream end of the Thames. And that's how we learned a valuable lesson. Preventing cholera is easy. All you have to do is make sure that people don't have to drink water that's been contaminated with sewage.
Today, cholera is all but non-existent in developed countries. Not because we're immune. Not because we have access to a miracle drug. It's simply about money. Money, and the will to build public sanitation systems that treat the poor and the wealthy to an equal level of separation between what we drink and what we excrete. After all, there were water services in Dr. Snow's time, but they were heavily divided by class. The wealthy drew their drinking water from upstream and dumped their sewage below that point, where it made its way to the public wells used by everybody who couldn't afford the better water.
Malaria is often what we talk about when we talk about diseases of poverty. But simple diarrhea kills more people every year. Cholera is only one part of that.
And it is all about the money. What kills you isn't so much the diarrhea, itself, but the loss of fluids and essential salts and minerals. Replace enough of those, soon enough, and people tend to survive. This is a disease that can be cured with Brawndo. (It's got what cholera victims crave!) In fact, one of the greatest public health inventions of the 20th century—and, perhaps, the most underrated—is the pre-mixed Oral Rehydration Therapy sachet—little packets containing dried mixtures of mostly sodium and glucose. Pour a packet into clean water, and you have an instant treatment for cholera. This is pretty much all that stands between a bout of cholera meaning a really bad, gross week, and a bout of cholera meaning death.
Right now, people are dying in Haiti not because we don't know how to save them, but because of a lack of access, both to clean water and to Oral Rehydration Therapy. In other words, they are dying not because of a disease, but because of poverty.
How You Can Help:
• Donate to Doctors Without Borders and help get Oral Rehydration Therapy to people who need it.
• Donate to World Vision, which does both medical work, and helps bring clean, safe drinking water to communities around the world.
• Donate to Water.Org, a charity devoted to water infrastructure projects.
Some Other, Related Links:
• Fault activity indicates that Haiti is at risk of more, and possibly larger, earthquakes
• Fascinating piece explaining how cholera can hide, dormant in a population for years, waiting for a sanitation crisis to attack
• Cholera at The Bacteria Museum
• The Climate Connection: How warming oceans can influence the spread of cholera
• Interesting information on what the toxin produced by cholera bacteria does in the human body and why it causes diarrhea
Eight things the public "knows" that aren't true
(Note: The highlighted words that are links that you can click.)
There are a number things the public "knows" as we head into the election that are just false. If people elect leaders based on false information, the things those leaders do in office will not be what the public expects or needs.
Here are eight of the biggest myths that are out there:
1) President Obama tripled the deficit.
Reality: Bush's last budget had a $1.416 trillion deficit. Obama's first budget reduced that to $1.29 trillion.
2) President Obama raised taxes, which hurt the economy.
Reality: Obama cut taxes. 40% of the "stimulus" was wasted on tax cuts which only create debt, which is why it was so much less effective than it could have been.
3) President Obama bailed out the banks.
Reality: While many people conflate the "stimulus" with the bank bailouts, the bank bailouts were requested by President Bush and his Treasury Secretary, former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson. (Paulson also wanted the bailouts to be "non-reviewable by any court or any agency.") The bailouts passed and began before the 2008 election of President Obama.
4) The stimulus didn't work.
Reality: The stimulus worked, but was not enough. In fact, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the stimulus raised employment by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million jobs.
5) Businesses will hire if they get tax cuts.
Reality: A business hires the right number of employees to meet demand. Having extra cash does not cause a business to hire, but a business that has a demand for what it does will find the money to hire. Businesses want customers, not tax cuts.
6) Health care reform costs $1 trillion.
Reality: The health care reform reduces government deficits by $138 billion.
7) Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, is "going broke," people live longer, fewer workers per retiree, etc.
Reality: Social Security has run a surplus since it began, has a trust fund in the trillions, is completely sound for at least 25 more years and cannot legally borrow so cannot contribute to the deficit (compare that to the military budget!) Life expectancy is only longer because fewer babies die; people who reach 65 live about the same number of years as they used to.
8) Government spending takes money out of the economy.
Reality: Government is We, the People and the money it spends is on We, the People. Many people do not know that it is government that builds the roads, airports, ports, courts, schools and other things that are the soil in which business thrives. Many people think that all government spending is on "welfare" and "foreign aid" when that is only a small part of the government's budget.
This stuff really matters.
If the public votes in a new Congress because a majority of voters think this one tripled the deficit, and as a result the new people follow the policies that actually tripled the deficit, the country could go broke.
If the public votes in a new Congress that rejects the idea of helping to create demand in the economy because they think it didn't work, then the new Congress could do things that cause a depression.
If the public votes in a new Congress because they think the health care reform will increase the deficit when it is actually projected to reduce the deficit, then the new Congress could repeal health care reform and thereby make the deficit worse.
And on it goes.
Woman stomped on at Kentucky debate
and get this:
Ron Paul goon who beat woman wore "Don't Tread on Me" button
Mike Pezzano, a member of The Lexington Rand/Ron Paul Mafia (excuse me ... Campaign for Liberty Group), wore an instructive button to remind his pals not to curb stomp *him*.
Five campaign fibs about the economy
Politicians are skirting the truth about the stimulus, the national debt, jobs, and health care.
Also:
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