T. Buckingham Thomas Archive 2023 March

Pro wrestling fans are getting excited for Wrestlemania 39, which will take place this weekend in southern California. Thanks to technology, most of the folks watching will not be in California. They'll be far away.

In a new article, Before There Was Live 4K, I recall earlier examples of remote viewing — dating back as much as 113 years!

Lately, behind my car parked at my apartment, a rabbit has been hanging out near the exhaust pipe.

She's alert when I'm on the porch, but otherwise she's hunkered down in the 40-degree weather, just dozing.

Once I saw her wake up with a bit of a start and go through the standard grooming procedure, scratching behind her ears and wetting her front paws to wash her face, before snuggling back into her fur coat again.

If I step off the porch and begin walking down the sidewalk toward the driver's door of the car, I invade her personal space. We make eye contact, and I say hello. The rabbit doesn't seem alarmed, but she's not comfortable having someone directly behind her, so she moves to the opposite corner of the car and turns around to face the sidewalk. (The same adjustment is required when the mailman arrives.)

Why does she like to hang out behind my car? Does my exhaust pipe spread something sweet-smelling over that particular plot of grass? Not likely. Is she an Easter bunny laying a clutch of eggs? In her absence I check the ground and see no evidence of a nest.

I think it's just a matter of finding a spot where she feels safe to relax. It's springtime, and there are younger-looking, more energetic rabbits hanging out under the pine tree on the other side of the yard, chasing each other back and forth. My rabbit seems older and doesn't want to be around that juvenile silliness. Nor does she want to be exposed to the traffic noisily moving up and down the street, nor the dog-walkers passing by.

The sun-warmed spot she's chosen (the yellow dot) is away from the tree, sheltered by its proximity to the building, and shielded from the street by my car. There she'll spend much of her retirement.

“The founders of religion are always extraordinarily intelligent people. ... The great problem with religion is when what is said by the founder of the religion, which was supposed to be taken metaphorically, is taken literally. And that’s where you get complete nonsense being made of what the founder of the religion said.”
— John Cleese

“On the night of his arrest the Lord Jesus took bread, and after giving thanks to God broke it and said: ‘This is my body, which is for you; do this in memory of me.’ In the same way, he took the cup after supper, and said: ‘This cup is the new covenant sealed by my blood. Whenever you drink it, do this in memory of me.’”
— The Apostle Paul, in I Corinthians 11

Jesus obviously realized that the food on the table was not his own body and blood.

He meant that every day in the future, when his followers broke a loaf of bread they should let that commonplace act remind them of his broken body.

And whenever they drank from a cup of blood-red wine, they should remember the blood that he shed to seal the new promise.

“No, that’s wrong. Jesus clearly said that when the Church stages a reenactment of the Last Supper, the bread will magically turn into his actual flesh! Really! And the wine will mysteriously be transformed into his blood! What a miracle! And then we can all eat the Lord’s body and wash it down with his blood!”
— Literal-minded would-be cannibal

Who was the first person to be called a “scientist”? Maria Popova writes that it was the Scottish mathematician Mary Somerville (1780-1872).

“In 1834, Somerville published her [third] major treatise, On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences — an elegant and erudite weaving together of the previously fragmented fields of astronomy, mathematics, physics, geology, and chemistry.”

Months later the master of Trinity College, William Whewell, reviewed her book, which quickly became one of the scientific best sellers of the century. Whewell couldn't praise the author merely as a Physicist, a Geologist, or a Chemist. “She had written with deep knowledge of all these disciplines and more.” And he obviously couldn't use the commonly used term at that time, “a man of science” (from scientia, the Latin word for knowledge). So he coined the inclusive word Scientist.

Polio outbreaks killed 7,130 Americans in 1916. The disease caused 57,879 cases of paralysis in 1952. Then, on this date seventy years ago in 1953, Jonas Salk — a scientist at the University of Pittsburgh — announced the successful trials of his polio vaccine. Cases fell rapidly to fewer than 100 in the 1960s.

Newer vaccines are a key to fighting other epidemics today. However, anti-vaxxers who refuse to accept scientific knowledge, trusting in God's protection instead, are sometimes betrayed by their faith.

An organization I support, centerforinquiry.org, is pro-science and also anti-pseudoscience, striving to protect people from faith healers, quacks, cultists, homeopaths, con artists, charlatans, psychics, and conspiracy theorists.

CFI is promoting March 26 as the Second Annual National Science Appreciation Day, which is being sponsored by ScienceSavesOrg as a day of gratitude toward the benefits that scientists have brought to our lives.

When my childhood home, the village of Richwood, Ohio, was founded in 1832, it soon became apparent that a gathering place was needed for public meetings and entertainment. Someone suggested that a “wigwam” would be worth an investment of $2,500. (“Wigwam” would later be the name of the temporary Chicago building where the Republican National Convention met in 1860.)

It took six decades, but eventually $10,000 was raised and a town hall was constructed of brick. It anchors the south end of the business district.

The clock mechanism was installed sometime after 1905, leading to the town slogan.

Village offices used to be on the first floor.

On the second floor there was an auditorium, leading to the building being grandly known as the Opera House. For a quarter century starting in 1935, an appreciative audience viewed movies in the auditorium. I recall seeing only two films there, but others have written memoirs which I've included in an article about the Union Theatre.

Recently the good folks in Richwood have been gathering funds to keep the building standing while perhaps repairing the clock and finding new uses for the venerable landmark. Here is an update.

Before our primate ancestor came down from the trees, if he had been colorblind he'd have had difficulty locating ripe fruit among the leaves because everything would have appeared to be various shades of yellow.

Fortunately the monkey had evolved separate receptors for green and red. In response, the fruit had evolved the trick of turning its skin from green to red to signal that its seeds were ready to be scattered.

I've added that Darwinian explanation to this month's 100 Moons article, which I wrote in 1991 suggesting a new use for 3D glasses — “the old kind from 40 years ago.” Make that 72 years now.

A couple of months ago, I mentioned that “around here, there's a different municipality every mile or so up and down the Allegheny River.” That seems to be true of all the rivers in Western Pennsylvania. I imagine that a pioneer in his canoe would choose a likely spot at which to settle, and then next pioneer would continue another mile along the riverbank before choosing his location, and so on. Towns grew up around each of those settlements.

Driving down Ohio River Boulevard on the right bank of the river, you'll pass 11 signs like this in the 11½ miles between Pittsburgh and the Allegheny County line.

I took a trip to explore fabulous South Avenue in Haysville, population 81. As I note in a new article, all these places could have consolidated into one long narrow city On the Right Bank. But no, they've stubbornly maintained their separate identities to this very day.

MARCH 14, 2023 ANOTHER NEOLOGISM

Marge Simpson in season 34, episode 16, airdate March 12:

“IT'S SO SAD WHEN PEOPLE CAN'T GET ALONG.
IT CAUSES ENSADMENT.”

(By the way, I'm back after a two-week vacation due to an unplanned software update.)