Here are some questions which Birdman has not been able to find answers for. If anyone has information bearing on these questions, it will be greatly appreciated, and contributions deemed useful will be posted. From time to time we will be adding new questions, so check back regularly! THE NEWEST QUESTIONS ARE AT THE END OF THE FILE.
(1) Richard Hoagland has written a lengthy but impressive article "Did NASA Accidentally 'Nuke' Jupiter?". Birdman has asked several professional astronomers to comment on this article, but without success, and if anyone can obtain a comment, it would certainly be welcome. It may be noted that Hoagland's views on various astronomical phenomena are controversial, tho he has won a certain degree of recognition by being attacked by a CSICOP operative, Gary Posner.
READER RESPONSES:
I was going to write earlier, but had assumed others
would inform you that the conception of turning Jupiter into a
second sun is, to put it bluntly, inane.
I have been an amateur astronomer since I was a teenager, and at
at the age of forty five, will gladly inform you that the planet
Jupiter, at 88,700 miles in diameter, is too small for
thermonuclear reactions to ever occur in its core, let alone its
atmosphere. A minimum temperature of twenty million degrees is
required to initiate the proton-proton reaction, i.e., the
conversion of hydrogen into helium, which powers Sol (our sun)
and other stars.
The sun's diameter is 864,000 miles; even mighty Jupiter is tiny
compared with our little yellow star.
Generally accepted theory is a body with at least one-tenth solar
mass has the capability of becoming a star (a brown dwarf) -
Jupiter misses this criterion by at least a factor of 100.
Arthur Clarke is indeed a brilliant science fiction writer, but
perhaps should have researched his data regarding such a
postulate; he may have in fact, and simply used the idea to spin
a good yarn. I reiterate - the mass of Jupiter is too small to
ever turn into a brown dwarf, second sun, whatever, either with
the help of man, or as a natural occurence.
It's sad to think so many people waste their time dreaming up
such ridiculous stories instead of concentrating on the matter at
hand - the wanton extermination of the white race.
Should you wish any further supporting data regarding Jupiter,
please feel free to ask. --Frederick
P
[Birdman comment:
No response to the above was forthcoming from the Hoagland
people, tho something may yet arrive. If so, I will post.]
Donaldo
reaches a conclusion in agreement with the above:
I read your post on the Galileo spacecraft causing a
nuclear reaction in
Jupiter's atmosphere. Unlike some posts I have seen on your site,
this was
largely scholarly. I did see that some websites predicted a
nuclear
explosion before the atmospheric entry. I am not a weapons
scientist but do
know a little about this subject.
The Los Alamos government website discusses the plutonium clads
at
http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/nmt/nmtdo/AQarchive/01spring/researcher.html
.
Each plutonium power supply on Galileo had 72 of these. (40
pounds total)
Each clad is 1.5 inches long by 1 inch diameter contained 150
grams of
plutonium 238 and generates about 65 watts of heat. Plutonium 238
is a very
poor nuclear explosive and requires enormous pressure to make a
small mass
of 150 grams fission. In the oxide form, fission is even more
difficult.
My guess is that even the pressure in the center of Jupiter is
insufficient.
A Scientific American article within the last couple of years
postulated
than there is at the core of Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus a
primordial
nuclear reactor operating from Uranium. This explains why each
radiates
considerably more heat than it receives from the sun. In spite of
this,
Jupiter's hydrogen does not fuse.
The Galileo probe entered Jupiter's atmosphere at 106,000 mph
with 152
kilograms of heat shield. About 82 kilograms burnt away during
entry.
http://spaceprojects.arc.nasa.gov/Space_Projects/galileo_probe/htmls/Heat_Shield.html
The shield weighed as much as the probe itself. From memory,
deceleration
forces reached 215 g, nearly enough to deform an anvil. (4,000
mph per
second deceleration) Electronics in the probe needed to be able
to withstand
launch from an artillery shell.
The Galileo spacecraft itself was a fragile thing that was only
designed to
withstand the forces of launch, around five g's or so. When it
hit
Jupiter's atmosphere, it came apart instantly at several hundred
g's.
Within seconds the aluminum cases of the Radioactive Thermal
Generators were
vaporized and the plutonium pellets scattered over hell's half
acre. They
likely slowed down rapidly and survived to eventually melt a
thousand miles
or so down into the atmosphere. The website that you mentioned
did not
consider the scattering of the modules and the fact that they
would be
released high in the atmosphere. There the pressure and
temperature are
comparable to Earth's
atmosphere.
This is a tempest in a teapot. Meteorites far more massive that
Galileo
enter Jupiter's atmosphere each second. It is feasible to drop a
nuclear
weapon into Jupiter's atmosphere. Even then I think that it is
impossible
to compress enough hydrogen to ignite nuclear fusion. It takes
gravity to
do that and Jupiter does not have enough. The sun's surface
gravity is 30 g
and Jupiter's is less than three.
[End of responses to Question 1]
(2) Does tertiary syphilis really exist, or is it just a sort of epiphenomenon due to the poisonous nature of the treatments which were once used (mercury- and arsenic-based medicines). Note: Brian Ellison and Peter Duesberg, who wrote Why We Will Never Win the War On AIDS, believe that long-term infections are impossible.
(3) Does anyone know where the phrase "I wonder why she swallowed the fly" originated? There is only one reference on the Net.
[READER RESPONSES]
A recent Daily Reads posting read as follows:
There was also another reader who knew this was from a book, but offered us no further information.
[End of reader responses]
(4) At least two sources I have seen -- one being Gertrude Coogan's 1933 book The Money Creators -- claim that Benjamin Franklin said that an Act of Parliament which ended the ability of the Colonies to issue their own paper money and forced them to accept Bank of England notes instead was responsible for great economic woe, and was in Franklin's view, the basic cause of the American Revolution. Apparently the legislation which Franklin denounced was the Currency Act of 1764. I have not, however, been able to find exactly what Franklin said, if anything, and where he was quoted. He apparently did NOT say it in his Autobiography, because this document ended, so I am told, in 1757. If Franklin was right about the bad effects of the restriction on the Colonies to issue paper money, then this is obviously of tremendous importance, particularly because it lays the woes of the Revolution at the feet of the 'international bankers'. It is clear that Franklin was in favor of paper currency as early as 1729, when he wrote "A Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper-Currency by Benjamin Franklin", because -- among other things -- he had a contract for printing the stuff. But my interest in exactly what Franklin said is not just to know his view of bankers and war, but it is also to settle a conflict between what Franklin supposedly said and what Murray Rothbard said about the history of Colonial paper money in his four-volume work, Conceived in Liberty, namely, that it was an economic disaster for the Colonies. (I have duplicated Rothbard's chapter on this subject and posted it here.) Rothbard's work is so detailed that it seems unlikely that Franklin could have said what he said unless he was an idiot, which he plainly was not. Another reason I want to know what Franklin said is to understand what relevance it has, if any, to the prohibition in the Constitution on 'emitting bills of credit' by the States -- something which sounds like it reflects Rothbard's view, but may only have been intended to insure a federal monopoly on money. (Thanks to gary in preparing this question.)
(5) David Irving declared that the Eichman diaries
proved that Germany did
have some kind of systematic killing of Jews. Here is what Irving
says, according
to the ADL Have revisionists dealt with this?
Q: What was Irving's
response to the discovery of Adolf Eichmann's post-War memoirs?
A: In January 1992 Irving attracted public attention by promoting
a copy of Adolf Eichmann's unpublished post-war memoirs. Quoted
in the London Daily Telegraph, he stated, "It makes me glad
I've not adopted the narrow-minded approach that there was no
Holocaust. I've never adopted that view. Eichmann describes in
such very great detail that you have to accept that there were
mass exterminations."
--http://www.adl.org/presrele/asus_12/2753_121352.asp
(6) I know that Churchill's 'Iron Curtain' quotation was lifted
from Goebbels,
and his 'We will fight on the beaches' quote lifted from Byron,
but I was
wondering whether the 'blood, toil, tears and sweat' quote and/or
the quote
below were also lifted from somewhere (I am under the impression
that they
were, but cannot confirm):
"If you will not fight for your rights when you can easily
win without
bloodshed -- if you will not fight when your victory will be sure
and not
too costly -- then you may come to the moment when you will have
to fight
with all the odds against you and only a small chance of
survival. There
may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no
hope of
victory, because it is better to perish than to live as
slaves."
(7) Conrad Grieb, in American Manifest Destiny and the
Holocausts, makes the
assertion that the reason why Herbert Hoover was not re-elected
is because
he would not 'play along' with the international bankers' schemes
regarding
the Depression (tho he does not specify in what way Hoover would
not serve
them), whereas Franklin Roosevelt was 'their kind of guy'. This
strikes me
as not in accord with the fact, as I understand it, that Hoover's
'Belgian
relief commission' during WW1 was established for the purpose of
extending
the war a couple of years, thereby presumably enabling the
hawkers of war
material to continue in business longer. Obviously the bankers
and arms
manufacturers are not the same, but both profited from the war,
and did so
synergistically. So what, then, was the real reason for Hoover's
defeat?
(8) Aaron Zelman of JPFO has claimed that the Holocaust (or
whatever passes
for it nowadays) might have been prevented if Jews had had guns,
and an
article in NA claimed that shortly after Krystallnacht, gun
control was
imposed on Jews. In contrast, William Pierce claims that there
was no 'gun
control' in Germany. Who is right? (See correspondence posted on
my
site.)
(9) Was the Reichstag Fire a plot by the nazis to create a police
state, or
was it merely an opportunity to create one which they made good
use of?
(10) The following came from somewhere I do not recall, and I
would like to
know whether it is true: "Hitler followed this prescription
by organizing
"street gangs" to commit random violence as he ran for
election on a
platform of restoring "law and order." As soon as
Hitler gained office he
had the constitution changed to give him the power he needed to
stop the
violence. He got the power and the "random" violence
stopped, although the
"gangs" were incorporated into the dreaded SS storm
troopers who continued
the terror against selected targets and scapegoats."
(11) As I understand it, Hitler justified his attack on Poland by
saying that
Polish invaders were found in Germany, but others have said that
this was
just a set-up by the nazis to provide an excuse for the invasion.
(Of
course there were actual good reasons for the invasion -- the
Danzig
corridor being the most notable.) Which is right?
(12) The Brits declared war on Germany on the basis -- not of a
treaty with
Poland, which was evidently concerned that Germans would invade
in order to
take back territory lost in WW1 -- but only of a diplomatic
'understanding'
which did not rise to the level of a treaty. This, plus the fact
that
Britain did not declare war on the Soviets when they attacked
Poland,
suggests strong Jewish-Soviet influence at the highest levels.
This is
reinforced by the following quote by AK Chesterton (The New
Unhappy Lords
(1969: 25)):
"James Forrestal, US Secretary of the Navy, states in his
Diaries that the
American Ambassador in London told him that Neville Chamberlain
had
complained of Jewish pressures to force Britain into war. Those
pressures
were obviously exerted with decisive effect through the
Churchill-Israel
Moses Sieff group [the 'war party', which also included Duff
Cooper and
Anthony Eden. Seiff was said to represent 'the interests of
International
Finance' (24)]."
The above suggests that the Jews were principally responsible for
WW2, and
this, along with the fact that the Jews were responsible for
drawing America
into the war, seems clearly to make WW2 a Jewish war against
gentiles, and
Germans in particular. But there is also the matter of the
responsibility
of the international bankers for the war -- many of whom, of
course, were
Jewish. The following suggests their role was a major one:
* AK Chesterton, in The New Unhappy Lords, asserted
that 'International
Finance' wanted Britain to enter WW2 against Germany, and he also
gives a
reason for this (23) -- an opinion concurred in by IHR's Mark
Weber:
"The other danger inherent in the policy of the Third Reich
concerned its
firmly held belief that if goods were available for exchange
between nations
there was no need for ether party to resort to interntional
lending houses
to finance the deal. Instead, the exchange should take placee on
a 'swap'
basis. No great insight is needed to perceive that the success of
this
system of barter, if employed on a world scale, would mean for
most
practical purposes the end of international finance and of the
immense
power which confers on its opertors. As though this were not
offense
enough, in the eyes of the interntional lending houses, the Third
Reich set
to work sedulously to repay its external debt and thereby regain
control
over its own economic destiny. One thing alone could quench
rebellion of
such magnitude -- war."
A theory similar to the above was repeated by Conrad Grieb in
American
Manifest Destiny and the Holocausts where he stated (p
17): "When Goering
supervised the policy of autarchy undertaken in 1936 he
encountered the
hostility of Schacht, the German counterpart of Montague Norman
[head of
the Bank of England]. In November 1937, when Schacht resigned as
President of the Reichsbank he termed Goering a fool in
economics. Despite
Schacht's contempt, autarchy succeeded. Its success, coupled with
trade by
barter, threatened to put an end to the international loan
business of the
banking nations whose financial interests would agitate for war
to suppress
the revolt.
Now if all this were true, it might be supposed that
International Finance
would not lend to Germany. This, however, is not the case, as has
been
documented in great detail by the late Antony Sutton in Wall
Street and the
Rise of Hitler, and by others. Indeed, as I recall, one
of the Warburgs
was deeply involved with lending to Hitler, as was the Bank of
England
before outbreak of the war. Here is a statement which Sutton made
on the
matter in an interview taken from the Net:
"Hitler's economic policies were OK'd by the bankers right
through the
war...ITT, Chase, Texaco and others were operating in Nazi-held
France as
late as 1945. In fact Chase in Paris was trying to get Nazi
accounts as
late as 1944. When we got to Germany in May 1945, I remember
seeing a
(bombed-out) Woolworth store in Hamburg and thinking,
"What's Woolworth
doing in Nazi Germany?" While we were bombed and shelled it
was "business
as usual" for Big Business. Try the Alien Custodian Papers.
See my BEST
ENEMY MONEY CAN BUY for more information." [Note: BEST ENEMY
deals
exclusively with the Soviets, and does not mention the Nazis. I
am not
sure whether Sutton meant that Big Business has no morals, or
just that
his memory was failing.]
So what is the answer to this -- were the Bankers helping the
nazis or
not, and if yes, how much and in what way?
A possible explanation of what was happening is the assertion
made in a
videotape produced by themoneymasters.com that the bankers love
war and
lend to both sides, but (1) they require that the winner
guarantee the
losing side's debts and (2) they determine the outcome of the war
by the
relative amounts they are willing to lend. This same assertion is
made in
Jim Keith, Casebook on Alternative 3, p 34, who quotes
a Professor Stuart
Crane (not otherwise documented) on the Rothschilds:
"If you will look back at every war in Europe ... you will
see that they
always ended with the establishment of a 'balance of power'. With
every
re-shuffling there was a balance of power in a new grouping
around the
House of Rothschild in England, France or Austria. They grouped
nations so
that if any king got out of line a war would break out and the
war would
be decided by which way the financing went. Researching the debt
positions
of the warring nations will usually indicate who was to be
punished."
(13) Quote: "The liberal Weimar constitution
imposed on Germany after the war was written by Hugo Preuss, a
Jew. The dominant political party of the Weimar period was the
Social Democratic Party, founded by Ferdinand Lasalle, also a
Jew. The economic devastation of Germany under the Weimar
government was extreme. The currency became worthless. Workers
were paid with wheelbarrows full of money -- twice a day, because
the depreciation was so rapid that your money would lose half its
value by nightfall. Eventually, billion-mark postage stamps were
printed, and trillion-mark bank notes, but all had the same
ultimate value: zero. German workers and soldiers saw their
savings and their future turn into nothingness. German children
starved. Jewish businessmen, during the same period, bought
ancient German estates for pocket change in foreign
currency."
--Scott Spencer of the NA in "The History and Significance
of the New World Order", Free Speech, Dec 1996
Question: In periods of inflation, the only sensible thing to do
is to hold onto real assets, because these -- unlike currency --
maintain their value. Thus it is crazy to assert (as is done
above) that Germans would have sold such value-retaining assets
in exchange for 'pocket-change in foreign currency', which might
itself not have been inflating, but would have no special value
above and beyond the real assets which were being exchanged.
Would anyone care to disagree?
(14) Why did Roosevelt make the possession of gold
illegal? (Note:
Since the Fed had been established in 1913, with power to inflate
the
currency, the calling-in of gold would not seem to have been
necessary
as a prelude to inflating the currency.)
Terrance responds: The issue here was trying to stabilize
international currency in the
aftermath of the Depression and then World War II. The
traditional
strong economies of Europe were devastated and the western powers
convened a monetary and financial conferece in Bretton Woods, NH.
The
upshot of the conference was to declare the dollar as THE
international currency tied to a fixed rate per ounce of gold. I
can't find the figure but I seem to remember that it was
somewhere
around $165 per ounce. (That may be complete fiction.) The price
of
gold was standardized. Gold reserves were stored in Ft.Knox and
the
value of the dollar was fixed. Other currencies were then pegged
to
the dollar. In the 70s, with hyper-inflation in Latin America and
the
emergence of OPEC along with the EC the system began to break
down.
Nixon removed the gold standard and prices of gold and
international
currency were allowed to fluctuate wildly as the
"market" demanded.
Consequently, American were again allowed to purchase and sell
gold in
the open market with no effect on the value of the dollar.
[Birdman comment: I find this answer completely unsatisfactory -- it doesn't seem to explain anything. I would guess that a correct answer would have to do with removing an alternate currency from circulation which could have been reverted to and used in lieu of an inflating and unstable fiat currency. And of course the currency has been inflated since that time, which is a clever and largely invisible way of robbing people of their wealth.]]
(15) Why did the English rendering of Chinese names
change significantly
a few years ago? (Peking/Peiping to Beijing, and Mao Tse-Tung to
Mao
Zedong, for example). Note that a similar situation has occurred
with
Kadaffi, who is now Quadaffi or Gadaffi.
Terrance responds: The Chinese example is well
documented and the one that has as much to do with "cultural
awareness" as much as anything else. The spelling of the
capital as
Peking was established by a westerner, Wade Giles. The Giles
system
was the standard system of romanization of Chinese until Mao's
cultural revolution. At that point the Chinese government took
issue
that a "westerner" had defined a system that to thier
ears was clearly
not conveying the language. The Chinese government blessed the
Pinyin
system and the western press soon followed suit.
To directly address your example of the difference between
pronouncing the word Peking and Bejing: A "P" sound is
an aspirated
version of the "B" sound. (you hear the breath in P but
not in B)The
two are not radically different it was more due to cultural
politics
than precision in language.
(16) Why do Polish, Vietnamese and (perhaps) certain other
languages
have English renderings which are not consonant with English
spelling?
For example, the city Lvov seems to require a vowel as the second
letter, and many other Polish spellings seem to give no clue as
to
their actual pronunciation. Similarly, the common given name in
Vietnamese, Nguyen, is actually pronounced "Win".
Terrence responds: This question is
more difficult to answer. In fact, I am not sure that I really
have
an answer beyond saying that the romanization of any language--in
our
case rendering a foreign language into english spelling that in
most
cases try to approximate the sounds--and every language has a
unique
history that often tells a story that answers these questions.
More
directly, there are a limited number of sounds and symbols in
English
language. These limited sounds and symbols must be used to
represent
sounds that in actuality don't exist as far as English is
concerned.
By way of example of the points mentioned above. We pronouce the
island country that was allied with Germany in the WWII with a J
sound--J-pan. The reason for this is that the first romanization
of
Japanese was done by a Portuguese translator--whose name
completely
escapes me. The Portuguese, in Latin fashion, use the letter J
where
we would use the letter Y. So, if you, as an English speaker,
substitute the letter Y for the letter J and use a Latin
prounication
of vowels the word Japan sounds much closer to the word Nippon
which
is a modern version of the pronounciation of the island nation.
On another note that may illustrate the complexity, the five
romance
languages, those derived from Latin, are French, Spanish,
Italian,
Portuguese, and the one most forget, Romanian. Since English
shares a
common derivation with German and Dutch it would reason, and in
fact
is the case, that the pronunciation of German and Dutch words are
more
adaptable to the English alphabet. However, through a host of
historical events (ie the rise of the Catholic Church and until
the
1960s its reliance on Latin for Mass) most American children, and
adults, learn Spanish or French so that we have a greater
affinity for
and knowledge of languages that from a genealogical sense should
be
"foreign" to us and struggle with Germanic
pronuciations.
(17) Why did electrical plugs switch from two-way (plug also goes
in
when rotated 180 degrees) to one-way (plug goes in only one way).
Terrence responds:
The "one way" plug is the second generation
of plugs. The first was the
one that you could plug in either way, however, as use of
electricity
increased in the home the liklihood of electrocution also
increased
and the complexity of devices that used electricity and their
sensitivity increased. Therefore, the electrical powers that be
began
to sink metal poles into the earth and connect these poles to the
complex world-wide electrical system to ground the system and
reduce
the very real possibility of a toaster or VCR shooting 4 foot
sparks
with the electrical force of lightning. So, the "one
way" plug
contains a ground wire in one side that is "grounded"
through the
electrical system to one of the ground poles in the earth. This
was
second generation thinking and it is not so elaborate since one
can
file down the larger prong and use the plug either way. The third
generation is the 3 prong plug that you have to saw off the third
prong to use in a conventional socket and the 4th generation are
those
plugs that have red button so that if there is a surge in power
the
button breaks the circuit before it can kill anyone.
(18) There
are three important clot-dissolving drugs which are customarily
stocked by hospitals -- streptokinase, urokinase, and tPA (Tissue
Plasminogen Activator). When I heard about streptokinase and tPA
a few years ago (I know nothing about urokinase), they were being
touted as first aid for heart attacks -- stuff to inject in order
to dissolve the clots that were presumably causing the attack.
(FYI, tPA was touted as an improvement over streptokinase, but is
apparently not, and furthermore costs a LOT more -- a couple of
thou per injection, I think.) In more recent times, a new
substance has come on the scene which is apparently also a
clot-buster, and has a strangely similar name: nattokinase. This
is an enzyme which occurs naturally in a common Japanese food
called natto, and which is said to be heart-healthy by Dr David
Williams (drdavidwilliams.com), a newsletter writer and natural
healing promoter in whom I have confidence. Williams is not very
clear about how nattokinase functions, but it is obvious from his
remarks that nattokinase is also a clot-buster, or at least blood
thinner. The questions are, (1) Is nattokinase also a good first
aid for a heart attack, either orally or by injection, (2) Is it
also good for stroke, or is it too risky in view of the fact that
strokes can occur either because of a clot, where nattokinase
would be helpful, or else because of bleeding into the brain,
where a blood thinner might be disastrous, and (3) what is the
nature of all these kinases that seem to be blood thinners or
clot-busters?
(19) Psychometrics is the ability of some psychically
gifted individuals to 'read' the experiences or history of an
object by touching or holding it. My question is, Can either
telepathic communication or psychometrics be used on animals (or
for that matter, humans) to gather information, and will this
information-gathering be made easier if the animal has some grasp
of human language, as do African Gray parrots or trained
dolphins?
(20) Can anyone ascertain the origins of the expressions 'on his last leg(s)' and '(last) leg of a journey' and say whether they are related? Birdman's theory is that tracing a journey on a map gives the appearance of straight lines connected together, each of which goes in a slightly different direction, thus looking somewhat like the angular hind leg of an animal, or perhaps from 'leg' meaning 'appendage'. The connection between the phrases comes in that one who is on the last leg(s) of a journey often feels tired, hence on his last legs.
Clyde responds: Given that I'm a sailor, I'm reasonably confident both 'Leg' expressions derive from 17/18th C naval terms. Others even coming down to us from the Viking period. I say this because many obscure terms and sayings from that glorious sea going period are still in use today. For instance, Ahoy! was a Viking battle cry that later became a traditional greeting for hailing other vessels. And, 'scuttlebutt' was the cask from which the ship's crew took drinking water, and hense the place where rumors originated. Port and Star Board, fore and aft are Viking terms still used in navigation. To point then: 'On his last leg' literally refers to that unfortunate sailor whose leg was blown off from enemy cannon fire. It was a common injury for those who loaded cannon. 'On the last leg if his journey' derives from the fact that the ship's spare wooded legs were gone by the time the ship was returning to port. A old British naval glossary would quickly verify this contention.
(21) There was some historical character who, tho a powerful warrior, had a squeaky voice. I think it was Charlemagne, but have been unable to verify. There was another historical character -- possibly the same one -- who died on his wedding night due to (I believe) over-intoxication. Anyone know who these folks are? [Attila is said to have died on his wedding night from overintoxication; but other historians think he was murdered. Thanks Tom G]
(22) If I am not mistaken, there is a song which goes
"This is my country
Land that I love..."
After an internet search, however, I cannot find the lyrics. In my search, however, I came upon another song with similar lyrics, and which goes
"This is my country,
Land of my birth..."
It is possible that the song I am trying to find is really the second song quoted above, with the second line replaced by the second line from "God Bless America", which goes
"God bless America,
Land that I love..."
However, the lines of the first song have become so firmly fixed in my mind, along with the fact that the lyrics of the second song are so unfamiliar, that I thought there really might be a song with the first-quoted lyrics above.
Should the reader be interested, the music which I remember for the first song is on the net HERE as well as other places I have found, but since this site does not give lyrics, I cannot tell which lyrics the posted music was intended to go with.
(23) There is a very odd phenomenon I have occasionally noticed when eating certain kinds of crackers, namely, that the cracker feels warm on the tongue, even tho it has been in the refrigerator. Even more strange, however, is that I have occasionally experienced an analogous form of warmth when touching newspapers, where the warmth is experienced not by the tongue, but by the fingers. When I experience these feelings it makes me think that the cracker or paper might be irradiated (which is not to say that an irradiated cracker would feel warm); but since this has happened over a period of years and I am healthy, I give no credence to this theory. I wrote about this phenomenon to one of the cracker companies whose product gave this effect, but they had never heard of it, so they said.
(24) The Ardennes forest is said everywhere to be 'impenetrable', and yet Germany's troops penetrated it during WW2. How did they do it?
Matt L offers the following answer:
The main reason why the Germans were able to penetrate the Ardennes forest in May 1940 was because the vast majority of the Ardennes forest region east of the Meuse river was practically undefended. Only cavalry units defended the Ardennes east of Meuse river. Cavalry units are of course no match against massed columns of tanks. The reasons for this debacle follow:
1) The Belgians did not allow French or British military forces into Belgium until after hostilities began on May 10. The reason for this is because the Belgians did not want to antagonize the Germans and did not want to give the Germans a pretext for invasion. The Belgians did not have enough forces to defend the entire eastern and northeastern border regions so the Belgians decided to forfeit, in effect, their territory (including their Ardennes region) east of the Meuse river and concentrate their military forces along the so-called “Dyle” defense line. This “Dyle” defense line was the Meuse river, the Dyle river and the Albert canal. This defense line was well west and north of the Ardennes. The Belgians only had a few cavalry units delaying the German advance in their part of the Ardennes.
2) The Luxemburg region of the Ardennes was not defended at all.
3) The French area of the Ardennes, east of the Meuse, was also only covered by cavalry units. The result was that the Germans reached the Meuse within 48 hours after the offensive began. The French area of the Ardennes west of the Meuse was only covered by a few mediocre divisions, whose troops mostly consisted of newly mobilized reservists, who tended to panic when hundreds of fighters and Stuka dive-bombers bombed and strafed their positions. The Germans also used their tanks in massed formations to punch through French infantry positions west of the Meuse river. The French infantry also did not have the support of French tanks to help defend the Meuse river defense line.
4) The French basically did an extremely poor and incompetent job of terrain analysis of the Ardennes region and ERRONEOUSLY termed the Ardennes impenetrable, which it was not.
I have pasted the following article below which I got from the following Internet site: http://www.historynet.com/wwii/blsickle/ "The French chief of staff, however, overestimated the deterrent value of the Ardennes. The forest was not as thick as he thought it was, and in reality the mountains were nothing more than a series of not-too-steep hills. Moreover, a good road network traversed the Ardennes between Sedan and the German border". I have pasted the following article below which I got from the following Internet site: http://www.geog.nottingham.ac.uk/milgeo2005/abs011.pdf "the French executed a faulty terrain analysis that deemed the Ardennes impassable for rapid, mobile exploitation and left the region poorly defended. The German terrain analysis was more accurate and they adroitly exploited the terrain and strategic geometry of the battlefield".
(25) Point light sources often appear to have rays emanating from them. Furthermore, these rays seem to have the curious property of having the vertical and horizontal rays (at 12, 3, 6, and 9 o'clock) as the most prominent, with intermediate rays being significantly smaller. (Particularly good examples of rays will be found in the Hubble telescope pictures of stars.) How can the existence of these rays and the prominence of the vertical and horizontal components be explained in terms of waves, interference patterns and other phenomena embraced by the laws of optics? Note: In looking at streetlights at night from my window, I do NOT see rays, but only a sort of fog, UNTIL I observe the lights thru a WINDOW SCREEN. This suggests that the rays are an epiphenomenon of the optics involved, and perhaps involve something in the order of polarization.
(26) Most of us have heard that injecting an air bubble into the bloodstream is fatal. Is this true, and if so, why? It would seem that the bubble would simply be absorbed; but even if it weren't, there is no obvious reason why it should cause a problem. Even 'the bends', which involve nitrogen bubbles in the bloodstream, is not necessarily fatal, tho it can be painful.
Michael S responds:
I worked as a surgical assistant for over twenty
years. I've seen air
bubbles large and small in intravenous tubing. You are correct
that a small
bubble or three is absorbed. Anesthesiologists and savvy nurses
know how to
remove the larger air spaces in I.V. tubing with a needle and
syringe at any
injection port the air hasn't reached. An open hypodermic needle
alone
works just as well. I've asked your question of many
anesthesiologists and
they all gave the same basic answer, small amounts are easily
absorbed into
the blood, air that cannot be absorbed can have negative effects
on the
heart, and given enough air would prove fatal.
I am uncertain of precise amounts of air, or even studies of the
phenomena.
(27) Electrical connections used to be simple, with 2 wires and a non-polar plug. Now however, everything has polar plugs, and sometimes a grounding wire, with the result that making simple electrical repairs or hookups that anyone used to be able to do are now catapulted into the realm of the expensive electrician, or the necessity of replacing the otherwise-repairable electrical gadget. Is this really a conspiracy of planned obsolescence, or to put more money into the hands of electricians? Or alternately, how can a home repair guy know that he is making the connection right?
(28) Computer security seems to focus mostly on viruses, but there are also trojans and worms, and perhaps other things. How can we insure security from these? And in particular, on those sites which require you to lower security from 'high' in order to use the site or download its files, how can we be sure we have not picked up something nasty? Are there programs that can either scan for things real-time, or at least after-time?
Hoop responds:
A "virusscanner" does not really scan for a virus but
for a "signature" that is: any code or a pattern in it
that matches that in a (regularly updated) list. That way most of
the known baddies can be found.
What popular label the "farmint" (virus, trojan, worm,
....) has or how it works does not matter as long as it is there.
(29) If, during morning or evening twilight, you position yourself near a tree where a large number of birds are roosting, you will often observe that the birds are very noisy in their vocalizations at this time for no apparent reason. (I cannot say that ALL birds do this, but certainly many of them do.) I have designated this phenomenon 'avian crepuscular twitter' or 'twilight twitter', and am curious to know the reason for its occurrence, if indeed it can be said that birds do anything for a 'reason'. I have Googled the net for the relevant terms, but have not succeeded in turning up anything.
(30) Several years ago the USDA droped one of its grades of beef, namely, Prime. The result is that one can no loger buy 'USDA Prime' meat. HOWEVER, one can still go to a restaurant and buy Prime Rib. What is going on here? In particular, where has all the prime meat gone -- has it just been relabeled Choice, or does the butcher take it home at night? And why was the Prime grading dropped, particularly in view of the continued salability of 'Prime Rib'?
(31) The medicos make big noises about how steorids are dangerous, and yet it is obvious that they are being used all over the place by bodybuilders who look - dare we say it? -- EXTREMELY healthy. How can we resolve this obvious disconnect? And beyond this, there is the matter of the impact of steroids on aging. In particular, it is known that testosterone and other hormones important for health decrease as we age, eventually practically drying up altogether. In researching whether steroids in modest (ie, non-bodybuilding amounts) can help this problem, I cannot find a straight answer, which suggests to me that steroids can indeed be a big help, but the Powers-That-Be (read: Medical Establishment) don't want you to know this, because it would put a crimp in the sale of doctoring and medicines. Does anyone have any good info here?
Freedom
isn't free! To insure the
continuation of this website and the survival of its creator in
these financially-troubled times, please send donations directly to the Birdman at
PO Box 66683, St Pete Beach FL 33736-6683
"The smallest good deed is worth the grandest intention."
Please
contribute today - buy our books - and spread the word to all
your friends!
Remember: Your donation = our survival!
* * * Back to the Home Page of John "Birdman" Bryant, the World's Most Controversial Author * * *