When showing why

Confederate statues constructed decades, or even close to a century, after the US Civil War? As much as I love reading about history, I sometimes wonder the point. But the mysterious case of the Confederate Statues almost feels like a mystery story. If the south wanted to honor its dead, I felt that perhaps it was right to keep the statues up.

Then I heard when the statues were erected.

Many of the statues honoring the Confederate leaders and fighters were erected half a century after the Civil War, concurrent with renewed or challenged segregation. More compelling, some confederate statues were put up during the Civil Rights movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s, almost a century after the end of the Civil War.

A half a century after the civil war? That timing makes it seem less like honoring the dead, and more about celebrating the cause. What cause? "Negro" inferiority. In other words, celebrating or supporting the tremendous suffering of human beings.

Excuse me while I vomit.

Because segregation wasn't "separate but equal"or a benign "southern culture":  it was murder. Lynching was used brutally to support a system in which skin color trumped ability and character. Segregation was daily humiliation, the insulting of children, the permitted abuse of every African American. And before that, slavery : legal kidnapping in chains, the separation by ownership of parents from children, whipping.

I might be able too support a few confederate monuments IF they were constructed when white southerners were mourning their dead shortly after the Civil War. Even then, it is offensive, but I'm willing to compromise that much.

Challenge me: look up for yourself when Confederate statues and monuments were put up. Then ask yourself what it was like to be black at the time.


The study of history can be relevant to the present.

More Evidence?

There are climate change skeptics, but the publisher of Skeptic flipped on the issue. Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, used to believe that climate change was not happening or, at least not human caused. He's changed his mind on this.

Katrina and the superdome. Sandy, with New York City streets under feet of water.

And I'm published in Skeptic, again, with vol22, n2. Reviewing books about fraud and cons. Obviously unrelated. One of the points, in one of the books: the most successful con is the one that is undiscovered.

And I've flipped over Skeptic.

Wondering War Woman

Are people who do evil things necessarily evil themselves?
Are all people who do evil things beyond the reach of change?

I liked the movie Wonder Woman --as fiction. In the film, there is evil which cannot be redeemed. Made for a more entertaining story if there's clear heroes & villains.

But, in real life, is it ever the same as it is in a superhero fantasy?

Damaged Care

What if the US Congress had the same health insurance as the rest of us? (They don't).

What Nancy Drew on

Did you ever read any of the Nancy Drew mysteries? I read book after book, more than fifty of them. I think I learned as much about writing from those books as from English class. But when I recently rediscovered them, I fell in love for a new reason: the cultural currents she "Drew" on. (forgive me).


The earliest volumes were published in the 1930s, when the US was a different place. Did you know that the first two dozen books in the mystery series were rewritten in the 1950s and 1960s to make them more modern? The original versions of the Secret of the Old Clock and its dozen or two follow-ups had Nancy wearing gloves and hats, and this was changed when the books were revised.

Racist stereotypes were also changed. Irish servants. References to a (stupid) black woman as a "negress."

The first detective story, of any type, is generally credited to Edgar Allan Poe in the 1840s. Children weren't really a market for them (or for anything else) until at least half a century after that. Oh, and in the 30s and 40s, Nancy as a strong female character, and a youth, was controversial.

Since the first Nancy Drew novel appeared in the 1930s, and are still being produced, it is now obvious that "Carolyn Keene" is a pseudonym. But it always was: no such person ever existed. Nancy Drew stories were contracted from a publishing company from the very start, with a clause taht the actual author could not receive credit or compensation beyond a small fee.

Some people dream of being given a new car (if not a blue roadster). I dream of being given a bunch of old (or new) Nancy Drew books. I'm a bibliophile and not wealthy (this is not a good combination). Hey, a girl can dream, can't she?

I'd type more, but I want to go back to reading Nancy Drew mysteries. They're really fun!

"Whether" prediction works?

Much more snow was forecast. On the news they talked of a foot or more for NYC. We have less than they forecast.

Is this unusual? My very first review for Skeptic magazine, written under my male pseudonym, talked about this. The book was William Sherden's _The Fortune Sellers_ and his persuasive argument was that predicting the future doesn't usually work. That even with better equipment and better training, weather prediction is not going to _ever_ be more accurate than an estimate, and that not for more than a day or two ahead.

Sherden makes the same argument for stock market prediction. People pay big money for stock market prediction, and how often is it right?

Try it: maybe write down for, say, a week, what weather forecasters say, and then write down what happens. How right are they for seven days ahead? For the next day?

Do you own stock? Would it give you confidence to write down what the predictors say, and then, six months or a year later, compare it with what happened?

Skeptic v21n4

Hysteria that even leads to the detention of a child? I'm talking of course about the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692 and their aftermath. If y'all haven't already done so, you might enjoy picking up a copy of Skeptic magazine, v21n4, the issue currently on newsstands. It features a book review by yours truly on the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692 and their aftermath.

In it I review three books: The Witches by Stacy Schiff, In the Devil's Snare by Mary Beth Norton, and America Bewitched by Owen Davies. Schiff discusses the 1692 epidemic with grace and comprehensiveness, Norton makes a step by step case about why the 1692 trials were longer and deadlier than any other in the colonies. Davies notes that some things haven't changed: it was women who were mostly executed in 1692, and women who were involved in most of the cases since, as late as the 1950s.

Skeptic magazine, by the way, looks to science to explain strange phenomena.