The Daily Bluster

Besides ruling the largest land empire the world has ever seen, Genghis Khan apparently is also the ancestor of 0.5 percent of the world’s male population. That’s around 16 million living, breathing great, great, great (and so on) grandkids of the Scourge of God himself. While the Phoenician Empire was built through commerce , Genghis Khan’s empire was built through warfare, with the result that he killed off a good portion of Asia’s population during his bloody conquests.   To be fair though, he also helped repopulate the world . How’d he manage it, though--how did he build an empire that, at its apex, occupied 16% of the world’s total land area? For one thing, he had an efficient, disciplined, well-organized army. For another, he had history’s greatest generals leading that army. One of them was Subutai, widely considered as the military mastermind behind the Mongol Empire. One of Genghis Khan’s legendary “Dogs of War” (there were four) Subutai is arguably the ...

I need not fear my enemies because the most they can do is attack me. I need not fear my friends because the most they can do is betray me. But I have much to fear from people who are indifferent. Assyrian Proverb  The Assyrian civilization is  one of the most brutal and fearsome civilizations of the ancient world , but little is known about their early history. According to some traditions, however, the city of Ashur (also spelled Assur ), one of the capitals of ancient Assyria, was founded by Ashur the son of Shem, the son of Noah. Yes, that Noah.    No, not this Noah. I mean the ark guy. Named for its ancient capital city Ashur, Assyria was originally a region on the Upper Tigris River. At its height, the Assyrian Empire controlled areas in what are now modern Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, western Iran, Kuwait, and Egypt. Nineveh was its capital. The Kings of Assyria controlled large kingdoms...

From the New York Times:  Student Faces Town’s Wrath in Protest Against a Prayer CRANSTON, R.I. — She is 16, the daughter of a firefighter and a nurse, a self-proclaimed nerd who loves Harry Potter and Facebook. But Jessica Ahlquist is also an outspoken atheist who has incensed this heavily Roman Catholic city with a successful lawsuit to get a prayer removed from the wall of her high school auditorium, where it has hung for 49 years. Read more here . And here . It says in the nytimes article that at ten years old, she became an atheist. Clearly, the girl is made of sterner stuff, and not just of sugar and spice. Yep, that's Jessica As local florists refused to deliver flowers to her, I asked a friend to deliver one to her: You rock, Jessica.

It is difficult to imagine the world today without money, or the concept of money. But surely, the first civilizations did not start out using money, right?             Long ago, people did not use money to buy things. They also did not use money to pay the person who repaired their roof, or built their tables, chairs and other furniture. What they did was to exchange the things they had for the things that they needed. If they had a lot of rice, they might want to exchange some of it for fish, so they would find somebody who has a lot of fish, and see if that person wants to trade some of it for rice. Or maybe a person who was very good at repairing roofs or making chairs and tables would get paid with bananas, or whatever fruit was in season. This type of doing business is called barter .              As you can imagine, barter trade has some serious flaws. For ...

So, 2012. The year the world is supposed to end. As the world (much of it, anyway) celebrated the coming of the new year, I couldn’t help but notice the different ways cultures of the world welcome the new year.  For us here in the Philippines, we like to usher in the year with a bang—literally. With firecrackers that can set off car alarms, and can reduce your precious doggies to whimpering, whining, shitting, piteous creatures; with firecrackers that shatter eardrums, and mangle hands and, in some cases, cause fires and kill people.  The firecracker on the left is aptly called "Goodbye Philippines" Also by firing loaded guns indiscriminately into the sky. This one’s fun—gravity tells us that what comes up must come down, right? So when the bullet does return to earth, it sometimes hit people, including children.  And kills them. Loud noises are supposed to drive away “evil spirits,” according to Chinese traditions. That people use this superstition...

I have never liked celebrating my birthday. Birthdays only remind me that I am one year closer to dying. Last December 28 was my birthday, and were it not for two old friends who actually made the trouble of going to my house to greet me personally, I would probably spend my birthday just like I did the year before (and the year before that): playing a video game. As it was, the three of us drank and talked about old times.   I’m glad they came; I actually enjoyed my birthday this year, which surprised me.  I suspect I am turning into a grouchy old fart, though. And I find I am content to be a grouchy old fart. What the hell, I am disappointed and disillusioned with the world—and the world is disappointed and disillusioned with me. Might as well live with that , and accept my grouchy old fart persona, even if I am not as old as this old fart: This is probably my last post for 2011. Frankly, I didn’t think this blog would go past this year, given...

So, in this season of hope, peace and good will, Catholic League president Bill Donahue has launched a campaign—“Adopt An Atheist,” is what it’s called. Behold : Here’s what our campaign entails. We are asking everyone to contact the American Atheist affiliate in his area, letting them know of your interest in “adopting” one of them. All it takes is an e-mail. Let them know of your sincere interest in working with them to uncover their inner self. They may be resistant at first, but eventually they may come to understand that they were Christian all along. If we hurry, these closeted Christians can celebrate Christmas like the rest of us. As an added bonus, they will no longer be looked upon as people who “believe in nothing, stand for nothing and are good for nothing.”   What he is doing is just perpetrating the bigotry that religious nuts like him have towards people who happen to not share his set of beliefs.  Religion could be dangerous, as it is; combine i...