The Daily Bluster

I’ve always liked The Onion. The site contain news that I like to read, whereas others have news that are really depressing. If only they have a news channel on cable, to compete with other news organizations that constantly bombard us with news from around the world that makes us cringe, puke, tear our hairs out, snort out in disgust, shout out imprecations, shake our collective heads, and other manifestations of rage and general dislike. Consider this article from The Onion : Science Confirms Men and Women Never Meant To Be More Than Friends March 28, 2011 | ISSUE 47•13 UPSALA, SWEDEN—In a shocking reversal of thousands of years of thinking on human reproduction, researchers at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences announced Monday that sexual contact is a genetic accident, and men and women originally evolved to just be good buds. "Using DNA evidence unavailable until the completed mapping of the human genome, we can now definitively state that the t...

Before the Neolithic Period , humans led harsh lives. They lived in caves, foraging, searching for food from dawn until dusk. They hunted wild animals. Sometimes wild animals hunted them. Life was very uncertain, and humans always worried about where their food will come from next. Fortunately, somebody figured out that certain seeds could be planted, and grown, and cultivated, and harvested; and if they could do it in a more or less permanent and hospitable place, it would be much better! They would not have to search for those hard-to-find wild plants that grew near swampy and marshy lands that were so often filled with unfriendly creatures. This time they could settle down in places where it would be easier to cultivate crops. Finally, humans learned to control their environment and to control and contain the food source. They also learned to domesticate some animals. This meant that people did not have to spend so much time hunting for food. Now they have time to do other things, o...

The person who finally figured out what to do with the grains on the grass-like plants that grow on marshy grounds was probably not aware that he has found not only food, but the seeds that will build civilizations. The cultivation of rice (and other grains) made it necessary for ancient peoples to live together and to cooperate with each other. The first communities were founded, and from these early agricultural communities the mighty empires of the ancient world arose. Archaeologists found evidence that rice cultivation in Asia began as early as 10,000 BC. In Thailand, rice was first grown there around six thousand years ago. Over the centuries, it has spread through China, Japan, and other Asian countries. So, next time you eat rice, think about this: from such small grains, empires were built.

T he world today has more than 6,000 languages. Linguists, however, assert that a few centuries from now, these languages could be reduced to a few hundred. Languages, too, can become extinct, like plants and animals. How do languages become extinct?      There are actually several ways of erasing a language. The simplest, of course, is to kill off the speakers. A government could also ban the use of minority languages and  punish those who persist in using them. The British and Spanish Empires, during their heyday, are two examples of centralized states that imposed their languages to conquered peoples.      Of course, there are less drastic, but no less effective, ways for a language to become extinct. Some languages undergo rapid change, or assimilated, and “mutates” into a different one. Like Latin. Latin, an extinct language, is the ancestor of modern “Romance Languages”—French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, and their variants. ...

Thomas Malthus lived about two hundred years ago, a time when optimism was in the air; when it was believed that the problems of humanity will eventually be solved by man himself, and that through human willpower, reason, and the innate goodness of the human species all the world’s problems shall be solved, and we will live happily ever after.  But in the world according to Thomas Malthus, man’s future is as murky as the Dickensian London fog, and as grim as the slums found in every city of the world. Thomas Malthus saw poverty, sickness, and misery in man’s future; he saw a world where man is forever laboring for food that is never enough to satisfy the hunger of his children. What’s more, he saw that famine, diseases, poverty, war, and other miseries are necessary to ensure the survival of the rest of humanity. Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834), who greatly influenced modern demographics, was born in England, and was educated in Jesus Co...

The “Spice Boys” Almost all countries in Southeast Asia were colonized by western nations. What is it about this region that attracted the white men? What were they looking for? History tells us that what they really, really, wanted was trade. More specifically, the spice trade. The spice trade even helped launch the Age of Exploration. Even during ancient and medieval times, spice was already worth its weight in gold. Spice was used for magical rites and purification ceremonies, embalming, cosmetics, perfumes, medicinal benefits, and of course for its more conventional uses: for cooking, food flavoring, and food preservation. During the 15 th and 16 th century, Europeans were looking for the shortest route to the fabulous East, and for the Spice Islands (the Moluccas, or Maluku, in Indonesia). They theorized that by sailing west, they would eventually reach the Spice Islands. Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese exp...

As my first post to this blog, I chose a piece I had written several years ago for a book I was writing. For now, I think I'll focus on history and related topics. The post on Thomas Malthus was posted March 21, but I deleted it accidentally. I do not want to go to a lot of trouble (a lot of trouble, for me) restoring it to its original date posted. Besides, I don't think it could be done, so I re-posted it instead. I blame first-time blogger blues.