The end of the innocence
Aaron Sofer was only 23 years old when his body was found in a forest near Jerusalem. Was he murdered? Probably. Was he guilty of any kind of crime? No. He was an innocent victim. Collateral damage
I don't know if Michael Brown was innocent. Did he take something from a convenience store? Did he or did he not charge at a police officer in defiance of an order to halt? If you'll pardon the turn of phrase, the jury is going to be out on this one for some time to come. But let's give him the benefit of the doubt, because in this nation we are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty.
Children killed in schools by other children, or deluded adults who should be locked in rubber rooms until they no longer present a danger to our society. What will it take until we admit that our innocence is lost? No disrespect to Don Henley but there is no place in this world that we can go where we won't have a care. No place that's completely "safe."
So what do we do? We live our lives as best we can, doing what we know is right and ethical, and make the best of it. We smile and enjoy the moments we have. We treasure those we care about and enjoy their company for as long as we can.
We also do our best to seek justice for the victims.
* * *
I've been hard on Joan Rivers of late, taking issue with her sense of humor, pointing out that she's everywhere and anywhere she can turn a buck and so on. I've never wished her ill will or injury and yet I felt bad today when I heard that she'd had a heart attack.
She was having a routine procedure on her throat when her heart stopped. I couldn't help but be reminded of L. A. Times columnist Steve Lopez, who is much younger than Rivers, who had his heart stop after minor surgery. Both were revived after a heart stoppage.
As far as I know, my heart never stopped, although I did stop breathing in the ER more than once. I wonder what they experienced. I'd love to ask them, and others.
However, there aren't any groups of people who "nearly died" to share their experiences. I was also told by a psychiatrist who deals with many who had such experiences, that the memory of what took place while they were unconscious can be very unreliable.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
Who cares if Bruce Jenner wants to wear Spanx?
If you get a phone call from someone claiming to be from the IRS who says they have a warrant for your arrest, it's a scam. I'm probably the last person on Earth that these criminals should be trying to scam that way, but they tried. I was amused.
If NBC was really paying Chelsea Clinton $600,000 a year, then they were overpaying.
If Kendall Jenner wants to be taken seriously, dropping her mom as her manager would be a much better move than dropping her last name.
Criticizing President Obama's choice of business suit is ridiculous.
If Nidal Hassan, the Fort Hood shooter, wants to become a citizen of the ISIS Caliphate, I'm sure that can be arranged for him; in the afterlife once he's been executed for his crimes.
Only an idiot would carry a gun onto a California school campus, even if he's a vice-principal with a concealed carry permit.
Britney Spears is single and ready to mingle. She's rich, gorgeous and many guys would shy away. I am one of them. As they say on Jerry Springer's favorite game show, she has too much "baggage."
The organizers of the Miss Asia Pacific World pageant thought the winner's breasts were too small, so they offered to pay for a "boob job" and she accepted. There is something seriously wrong with that.
Good for the guy who was the date of Miley Cyrus to the VMAs. He turned himself in.
WWE Hall of Famer Jake "The Snake" Roberts is in an intensive care unit suffering from what was described as double pneumonia. That's an arcane term, that was used to describe pneumonia in both lungs. But he is really ill and I hope he gets better.
Tripling the amount of CA government subsidies for film production that stays in CA is a good first step.
Anyone who cries out "foul," claiming that it was Michael Sam's sexual preference that caused him to be cut from the St. Louis Rams is just wrong.
Why is it that the approval rating of Congress is at such a low level and yet most incumbents will win reelection easily?
* * *
August 30th in History:
526 – King Theoderic the Great dies of dysentery at Ravenna; his daughter Amalasuntha takes power as regent for her 10-year old son Athalaric.
1282 – Peter III of Aragon, originally traveling with his fleet on a military expedition against the Hafsid Kingdom, ends up in the Sicilian town of Trapani, after he was asked by the inhabitants of Palermo to help in the fight against Charles of Anjou.
1363 – Beginning date of the Battle of Lake Poyang; the forces of two Chinese rebel leaders — Chen Youliang and Zhu Yuanzhang — are pitted against each other in what is one of the largest naval battles in history, during the last decade of the ailing, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty.
1464 – Pope Paul II succeeds Pope Pius II as the 211th pope.
1574 – Guru Ram Das becomes the Fourth Sikh Guru/Master.
1590 – Tokugawa Ieyasu enters Edo Castle. (Traditional Japanese date: August 1, 1590)
1791 – HMS Pandora sinks after having run aground on a reef the previous day.
1799 – The entire Dutch fleet is captured by British forces under the command of Sir Ralph Abercromby and Admiral Sir Charles Mitchell during the War of the Second Coalition.
1800 – Gabriel Prosser postpones a planned slave rebellion in Richmond, Virginia, but is arrested before he can make it happen.
1813 – First Battle of Kulm: French forces are defeated by an Austrian-Prussian-Russian alliance.
1813 – Creek War: Fort Mims massacre: Creek "Red Sticks" kill over 500 settlers (including over 250 armed militia) in Fort Mims, north of Mobile, Alabama.
1835 – Melbourne is founded.
1836 – The city of Houston is founded by Augustus Chapman Allen and John Kirby Allen
1862 – American Civil War – Battle of Richmond: Confederates under Edmund Kirby Smith rout Union forces under General Horatio Wright.
1873 – Austrian explorers Julius von Payer and Karl Weyprecht discover the archipelago of Franz Josef Land in the Arctic Sea.
1896 – Philippine Revolution: After Spanish victory in the Battle of San Juan del Monte, eight provinces in the Philippines are declared under martial law by the Spanish Governor-General Ramón Blanco y Erenas.
1897 – The town of Ambiky is captured by France from Menabe in Madagascar.
1909 – Burgess Shale fossils are discovered by Charles Doolittle Walcott.
1914 – World War I: Germans defeat the Russians in the Battle of Tannenberg
1917 – Vietnamese prison guards led by Trịnh Văn Cấn mutiny at the Thái Nguyên penitentiary against local French authority.
1918 – Fanni Kaplan shoots and seriously injures Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. This, along with the assassination of Bolshevik senior official Moisei Uritsky days earlier, prompts the decree for Red Terror.
1922 – Battle of Dumlupınar: The final battle in the Greco-Turkish War ("Turkish War of Independence").
1940 – The Second Vienna Award reassigns the territory of Northern Transylvania from Romania to Hungary.
1942 – World War II: The Battle of Alam el Halfa begins.
1945 – Hong Kong is liberated from Japan by British Armed Forces.
1945 – The Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Douglas MacArthur lands at Atsugi Air Force Base.
1945 – The Allied Control Council, governing Germany after World War II, comes into being.
1945 – The August Revolution ends as Emperor Bảo Đại abdicates, ending the Nguyễn dynasty.
1956 – The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway opens.
1962 – Japan conducts a test of the NAMC YS-11, its first aircraft since World War II and its only successful commercial aircraft from before or after the war.
1963 – The Moscow–Washington hotline between the leaders of the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union goes into operation.
1967 – Thurgood Marshall is confirmed as the first African American Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
1974 – A Belgrade–Dortmund express train derails at the main train station in Zagreb killing 153 passengers.
1974 – A powerful bomb explodes at the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries headquarters in Marunouchi, Tokyo, Japan. Eight are killed, 378 are injured. Eight left-wing activists are arrested on May 19, 1975 by Japanese authorities.
1981 – President Mohammad-Ali Rajai and Prime Minister Mohammad-Javad Bahonar of Iran are assassinated in a bombing committed by the People's Mujahedin of Iran.
1984 – STS-41-D: The Space Shuttle Discovery takes off on its maiden voyage.
1995 – Bosnian War: NATO launches Operation Deliberate Force against Bosnian Serb forces.
1998 – Second Congo War: Armed forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and their Angolan and Zimbabwean allies recapture Matadi and the Inga dams in the western DRC from RCD and Rwandan troops.
1999 – East Timor votes for independence from Indonesia in a referendum.
2003 – While being towed across the Barents Sea, the de-commissioned Russian submarine K-159 sinks, taking nine of her crew and 800 kg of spent nuclear fuel with her.
Famous Folk Born on August 30th:
Mary Shelley
Ernest Rutherford
Huey Long
Raymond Massey
Shirley Booth
Fred MacMurray
Richard Stone
Ted Williams
Kitty Wells
Vic Sexias
Geoffrey Beane
Daryl Gates
Bill Daily
Warren Buffett
John Phillips
Bruce McLaren
Elizabeth Ashley
Jean-Claude Killy
Molly Ivins
Tug McGraw
Peggy Lipton
Lewis Black
Timothy Bottoms
David Paymer
Gary Gordon (Medal of Honor recipient, true American hero)
Michael Chiklis
Michael Michele
Cameron Diaz
Lisa Ling
Andy Roddick
I don't know if Michael Brown was innocent. Did he take something from a convenience store? Did he or did he not charge at a police officer in defiance of an order to halt? If you'll pardon the turn of phrase, the jury is going to be out on this one for some time to come. But let's give him the benefit of the doubt, because in this nation we are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty.
Children killed in schools by other children, or deluded adults who should be locked in rubber rooms until they no longer present a danger to our society. What will it take until we admit that our innocence is lost? No disrespect to Don Henley but there is no place in this world that we can go where we won't have a care. No place that's completely "safe."
So what do we do? We live our lives as best we can, doing what we know is right and ethical, and make the best of it. We smile and enjoy the moments we have. We treasure those we care about and enjoy their company for as long as we can.
We also do our best to seek justice for the victims.
* * *
I've been hard on Joan Rivers of late, taking issue with her sense of humor, pointing out that she's everywhere and anywhere she can turn a buck and so on. I've never wished her ill will or injury and yet I felt bad today when I heard that she'd had a heart attack.
She was having a routine procedure on her throat when her heart stopped. I couldn't help but be reminded of L. A. Times columnist Steve Lopez, who is much younger than Rivers, who had his heart stop after minor surgery. Both were revived after a heart stoppage.
As far as I know, my heart never stopped, although I did stop breathing in the ER more than once. I wonder what they experienced. I'd love to ask them, and others.
However, there aren't any groups of people who "nearly died" to share their experiences. I was also told by a psychiatrist who deals with many who had such experiences, that the memory of what took place while they were unconscious can be very unreliable.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
Who cares if Bruce Jenner wants to wear Spanx?
If you get a phone call from someone claiming to be from the IRS who says they have a warrant for your arrest, it's a scam. I'm probably the last person on Earth that these criminals should be trying to scam that way, but they tried. I was amused.
If NBC was really paying Chelsea Clinton $600,000 a year, then they were overpaying.
If Kendall Jenner wants to be taken seriously, dropping her mom as her manager would be a much better move than dropping her last name.
Criticizing President Obama's choice of business suit is ridiculous.
If Nidal Hassan, the Fort Hood shooter, wants to become a citizen of the ISIS Caliphate, I'm sure that can be arranged for him; in the afterlife once he's been executed for his crimes.
Only an idiot would carry a gun onto a California school campus, even if he's a vice-principal with a concealed carry permit.
Britney Spears is single and ready to mingle. She's rich, gorgeous and many guys would shy away. I am one of them. As they say on Jerry Springer's favorite game show, she has too much "baggage."
The organizers of the Miss Asia Pacific World pageant thought the winner's breasts were too small, so they offered to pay for a "boob job" and she accepted. There is something seriously wrong with that.
Good for the guy who was the date of Miley Cyrus to the VMAs. He turned himself in.
WWE Hall of Famer Jake "The Snake" Roberts is in an intensive care unit suffering from what was described as double pneumonia. That's an arcane term, that was used to describe pneumonia in both lungs. But he is really ill and I hope he gets better.
Tripling the amount of CA government subsidies for film production that stays in CA is a good first step.
Anyone who cries out "foul," claiming that it was Michael Sam's sexual preference that caused him to be cut from the St. Louis Rams is just wrong.
Why is it that the approval rating of Congress is at such a low level and yet most incumbents will win reelection easily?
* * *
August 30th in History:
526 – King Theoderic the Great dies of dysentery at Ravenna; his daughter Amalasuntha takes power as regent for her 10-year old son Athalaric.
1282 – Peter III of Aragon, originally traveling with his fleet on a military expedition against the Hafsid Kingdom, ends up in the Sicilian town of Trapani, after he was asked by the inhabitants of Palermo to help in the fight against Charles of Anjou.
1363 – Beginning date of the Battle of Lake Poyang; the forces of two Chinese rebel leaders — Chen Youliang and Zhu Yuanzhang — are pitted against each other in what is one of the largest naval battles in history, during the last decade of the ailing, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty.
1464 – Pope Paul II succeeds Pope Pius II as the 211th pope.
1574 – Guru Ram Das becomes the Fourth Sikh Guru/Master.
1590 – Tokugawa Ieyasu enters Edo Castle. (Traditional Japanese date: August 1, 1590)
1791 – HMS Pandora sinks after having run aground on a reef the previous day.
1799 – The entire Dutch fleet is captured by British forces under the command of Sir Ralph Abercromby and Admiral Sir Charles Mitchell during the War of the Second Coalition.
1800 – Gabriel Prosser postpones a planned slave rebellion in Richmond, Virginia, but is arrested before he can make it happen.
1813 – First Battle of Kulm: French forces are defeated by an Austrian-Prussian-Russian alliance.
1813 – Creek War: Fort Mims massacre: Creek "Red Sticks" kill over 500 settlers (including over 250 armed militia) in Fort Mims, north of Mobile, Alabama.
1835 – Melbourne is founded.
1836 – The city of Houston is founded by Augustus Chapman Allen and John Kirby Allen
1862 – American Civil War – Battle of Richmond: Confederates under Edmund Kirby Smith rout Union forces under General Horatio Wright.
1873 – Austrian explorers Julius von Payer and Karl Weyprecht discover the archipelago of Franz Josef Land in the Arctic Sea.
1896 – Philippine Revolution: After Spanish victory in the Battle of San Juan del Monte, eight provinces in the Philippines are declared under martial law by the Spanish Governor-General Ramón Blanco y Erenas.
1897 – The town of Ambiky is captured by France from Menabe in Madagascar.
1909 – Burgess Shale fossils are discovered by Charles Doolittle Walcott.
1914 – World War I: Germans defeat the Russians in the Battle of Tannenberg
1917 – Vietnamese prison guards led by Trịnh Văn Cấn mutiny at the Thái Nguyên penitentiary against local French authority.
1918 – Fanni Kaplan shoots and seriously injures Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. This, along with the assassination of Bolshevik senior official Moisei Uritsky days earlier, prompts the decree for Red Terror.
1922 – Battle of Dumlupınar: The final battle in the Greco-Turkish War ("Turkish War of Independence").
1940 – The Second Vienna Award reassigns the territory of Northern Transylvania from Romania to Hungary.
1942 – World War II: The Battle of Alam el Halfa begins.
1945 – Hong Kong is liberated from Japan by British Armed Forces.
1945 – The Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Douglas MacArthur lands at Atsugi Air Force Base.
1945 – The Allied Control Council, governing Germany after World War II, comes into being.
1945 – The August Revolution ends as Emperor Bảo Đại abdicates, ending the Nguyễn dynasty.
1956 – The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway opens.
1962 – Japan conducts a test of the NAMC YS-11, its first aircraft since World War II and its only successful commercial aircraft from before or after the war.
1963 – The Moscow–Washington hotline between the leaders of the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union goes into operation.
1967 – Thurgood Marshall is confirmed as the first African American Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
1974 – A Belgrade–Dortmund express train derails at the main train station in Zagreb killing 153 passengers.
1974 – A powerful bomb explodes at the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries headquarters in Marunouchi, Tokyo, Japan. Eight are killed, 378 are injured. Eight left-wing activists are arrested on May 19, 1975 by Japanese authorities.
1981 – President Mohammad-Ali Rajai and Prime Minister Mohammad-Javad Bahonar of Iran are assassinated in a bombing committed by the People's Mujahedin of Iran.
1984 – STS-41-D: The Space Shuttle Discovery takes off on its maiden voyage.
1995 – Bosnian War: NATO launches Operation Deliberate Force against Bosnian Serb forces.
1998 – Second Congo War: Armed forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and their Angolan and Zimbabwean allies recapture Matadi and the Inga dams in the western DRC from RCD and Rwandan troops.
1999 – East Timor votes for independence from Indonesia in a referendum.
2003 – While being towed across the Barents Sea, the de-commissioned Russian submarine K-159 sinks, taking nine of her crew and 800 kg of spent nuclear fuel with her.
Famous Folk Born on August 30th:
Mary Shelley
Ernest Rutherford
Huey Long
Raymond Massey
Shirley Booth
Fred MacMurray
Richard Stone
Ted Williams
Kitty Wells
Vic Sexias
Geoffrey Beane
Daryl Gates
Bill Daily
Warren Buffett
John Phillips
Bruce McLaren
Elizabeth Ashley
Jean-Claude Killy
Molly Ivins
Tug McGraw
Peggy Lipton
Lewis Black
Timothy Bottoms
David Paymer
Gary Gordon (Medal of Honor recipient, true American hero)
Michael Chiklis
Michael Michele
Cameron Diaz
Lisa Ling
Andy Roddick
posted by me at 5:58 PM
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