The only thing to fear...

At birth, human babies are afraid of only two things: loud noises and falling. All other fears and phobias are learned.

Hemp and History

I read an artical on cnn.com yesterday about a couple of farmers who are suing the US government to be allowed to grow hemp. Now, make no mistake, hemp is not marijuana. Although hemp looks a lot like its potent cousin, marijuana, hemp lacks the ingredient that makes a person "high".

When America was still forming, hemp was a very important cash crop, more important even than tobacco. Virginians were required to grow it. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were written on hemp paper. Betsy Ross's flag was made with hemp cloth. The US navy used hemp rope and sails on its ships for years (canvas is the Dutch word for cannabis), and America's production of hemp has helped our country to win wars. Even George Washington grew hemp at Mt. Vernon. One acre of hemp can produce as much paper as four acres of trees. Besides paper and cloth, hemp can be used to make food, beauty products, plastics, and fuels. In fact, the first Model T was built to run on hemp gasoline!

The United States still imports hemp, but it became illegal to grow it in 1937. Why? Some sources think that the giant Hearst Paper Manufacturing Company (with its acres and acres of forests) and Dupont (the company that patented the process of making plastic from petroleum) had something to do with it. The 1930s produced "Reefer Madness" and other propoganda, which touted the violence and insanity-producing effects of the plant soon to be known by the Mexican slang word, "marijuana". Sometime after 1937, all references to hemp were removed from our history textbooks.

The Nelson Touch

Vice-Admiral and 1st Viscount Horatio Nelson was a great British military figure during the Napoleonic wars. He so brought out the best in his officers and seamen that his inspiration gained the name, "The Nelson Touch". When Nelson died at the Battle of Trafalgar, his body was preserved in a barrel of brandy for the voyage back to Britain. When the ship reached port, the crew removed their leader's body and celebrated his achievements by drinking the brandy!

Charm, Murder, Leap, Shiver, and Crash

A group of frogs is called an army.
A group of geese is called a gaggle.
A group of crows is called a murder.
A group of leopards is called a leap.
A group of turtles is called a bale.
A group of mallards is called a flush.
A group of moles is called a labor.
A group of woodpeckers is called a descent.
A group of hummingbirds is called a charm.
A group of toads is called a knot.
A group of hippopotamuses is called a bloat.
A group of rhinos is called a crash.
A group of owls is called a parliament.
A group of sharks is called a shiver.
A group of kangaroos is called a mob.
A group of tigers is called a streak.

The Curse of Tippecanoe

In 1811, future president William Henry Harrison defeated Tecumseh at the battle of Tippecanoe. It is said that Tecumseh's brother, known as "The Prophet"
placed a curse on Harrison and the US presidency. In 1840, William Henry Harrison was elected president. He caught pneumonia during his inaugural speech and died a few months later.

1860: Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in his second term.
1880: James Garfield was assassinated in his first year of office.
1900: William McKinley was assassinated, too.
1920: Warren G. Harding died of a stroke during his first term.
1940: Franklin Delano Roosevelt died in his third term of a brain hemorrhage.
1960: Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in his first term.
1980: Ronald Reagan was shot in the lung, missing his heart by less than an inch!
2000: George W. Bush was not elected by popular vote, but was elected by the electorial college.

Did the curse wear off? Was it thwarted by advances in the medical field, in Reagan's case? Is Bush in mortal peril? Or was there ever really a curse at all?

This is my first post!

As it turns out, the World Wide Web and the Internet are not quite the same thing, even though people use the terms interchangeably.



The World Wide Web is a network of documents. These documents (such as this blog) are lynked together with hyperlinks--those underlined words you use to surf around. The Web was first created in 1989 in Geneva, Switzerland.



The Internet, on the other hand, has been around much longer. The term Internet generally refers to the massive network of hardware--hard wires, fiber-optic cables, wireless connections, and so on--which makes it possible to access the World Wide Web.