History & Comment for April 4, 2025

A look at historical and current events on this day, comment and humor so dry it would make a camel thirsty. 

Transcript

This is History and Comment for Friday the 4th of April 2025

There was a short bit on the Christian Radio Station that prompted a longer thought.  If in the Old Testament Period,   God judged Countries for their corporate behavior.   This included Israel and their neighbors like Babylon, Persia and a list of smaller tribes.  It begs the question,  does he still judge nations and what does it look like.   Conversely, does he bless nations?   

Speaking of the historical nations.  We read of the Meads and Persians.  Persia is quite easy,  Iran was known as Persia until 1935.   A story I read the other day claimed the Meads would have been related to the Kurds of Northern Iran / Turkey area.  

There was another quip about the several days of significant rain and when we should start building an ark?    No one knows, what the forty days and nights of rain looked like.   Many creation scientist who have pondered the question,  key on the phrase “The fountains of the deep opened”   to extrapolate that this might have been the breaking up of an ancient super continent and plate tectonics. Further suggesting,   massive world wide jets of high pressure water might have eroded and rained massive amounts of water and sediment.   I believe Answers in Genesis has animations of the concepts.    There are also suggestions that instead of the continents moving fractions of a inche per year they might have gain speeds in the several miles per hour range.   

Long Earth folks,    prefer to assume a stead state, where the conditions we see today, have been present for millenia.    With changes taking place over very long periods of time.     If you assume a Bibilical timeline.   There are three “creation” events not a single one.   Points in time where God intervened to make drastic changes in the physics and natural world.   The first was creation week.   The second was the fall of man,   we are only given hints of what changed at that point, but it was foundational. Lastly, the flood completely recreated the face of the earth.   Some well-educated folks who contemplate the subject suggest that the atmosphere prior to the flood was different than the post-flood world.   To the point where it was almost two completely different environments.   With the preflood being more like the one long-earth folks described during the period of the dinosaurs.   

The simple answer is we do not know.   Smart folks can offer ideas but none can be observed.   It is all speculation and evaluating the evidence we see today.

There was a rudely funny video on the feed.   A family had taken a toddler a display of animal models.   Including one dinosaur that was a costumed actor.  All was well until the dinosaur approached the child and started chasing him.     It was funny in a warpped way, I suspect the child has been traumatized for life.   

The news media is full of reports of Tom Cruse having a moment of silence for Co-Star Val Kilmer.    That is nice and maybe proper.   I have to wonder about comment like he was a dear friend.  Maybe and maybe not.   Hollywood is filled with strong personalities that can be difficult. What we see on the screen is for appearance only.    The most intriguing comment was wishing him well on his next journey.    That seems innocent and proper, but the wording is a bit strange.    Cruse is a member of the Church of Scientology.   It is debatable if that organization is a church or profit scheme.   They make Joel Olstein look lilly white. They also hold to the idea our inner self or thetan will be reincarnated many times.      

The Indiana legislature is still in session.    I have been getting a lesson on the process, while I watch a bill I’m interested in work its way through.   The adage law and sasauge are two things you do not want to see how they are made, seems to be true.    

A few weeks  back we mentioned there was a bill  offered to form a commission to study realigning the Indiana / Illinois border.   That bill has passed the house and the first reading in the Senate.   It is moving slowly and the clock may run out in this session.   If that happens the process will start over next year if the bill is reintroduced. 

There is a thougth that the purpose of the Military is to destroy things and generally mess them up.  Recall that SNAFU one of a series of military acronyms.   Not the social experiment that some in Government have proposed.    My military experience is on the civilian side, so I am not qualified to speak on a lot of military subjects.    One thing should be clear,  it is an alpha male world.   There is a personality that works and a long list of ones that do not.    Certainly in the lower ranks.   I do know a couple of example where really decent guys who did not fit that model well, rose to high enlisted ranks.  But they seem to be the exception.    I digress, there is a guy who is publishing military cadence songs on-line and has a CD for sale.  Look up, Jonathan Michael Fleming.  Be warned, this stuff will not be play for the public at the fourth of July picnic. 

Congress is debating the flag on this day in 1818.   The rules were not set in stone at that time.   For a period a star and stripe were added for each additional state.    The flag that Francis Scott Key watched flying over Ft. McHenry had 15 stars and stripes.   In the 1818 bill,  the strip number was returned to 13 for the original 13 states and a star would be added for each new state.    At the time that was 20.    In total there have been 27 versions of the US Flag.  The current 50 star version is the longest running, being adopted in July 1960.  

President Lincoln makes the trip to Richmond, Virginia on this day in 1865. Just one day after the former Confederate Capital fell to Union forces.  

99 years later,  The British Invasion, is in full swing.  The Beatles, occupy the top five position on the Billboard Hot 100.   Also in the top 10 are Louis Armstrong with Hello Dolly,  Suspicion by Terry Stafford would be recognizable.   The Beach Boys, Fun Fun, Fun is dropping, having peaked at No 6. Also on the chart.  Jan and Dean’s Dead Mans Curve, is at No 35 and climbing, it will peak at 25.   Down the chart there are six more Beatle songs.   

The last C-141 load of Vietnam POWs, known as the Hanoi Taxi departs.   There were 54 Taxi flights out of Hanoi over about seven weeks. Repatrioting almost 600 soliders.   That is a generic term.  Over half were Air Force Air Crews.  About ¼ Navy personnel.  And about 100 Army and Marines.  The number included 25 Civilians, working in country.   

It is birthday number 50 for Microsoft.   Founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen set up the partnership to write programs in BASIC. Five years later they are trying to develop a Disk Operating System for the new IBM PCs.   To jump start the effort they purchase the code to QDOS from a Seattle Programmer.  QDOS stood for Quick and Dirty Operation System.   A computer geek friend complained about DOS and its quirks well into the 90s.    His preference was Commodore products.    

Microsoft programs have rarely been the best offerings in the market place.   Their word was also not the first word processor, nor was Excell the first spreadsheet.  They just had the horsepower to dominate. 

President Reagan call for a ban on chemical weapons in 1984.  

Actor Hugo Weaving is 65 today.    Weaving’s most famous credit is as Elrond in the LOTR series.   

Southern Indiana native and retired MLB player Scott Rolen is 50 today.   The latest news for the past several years he has been a part of the Indiana University Baseball program.  It is a convenient Div 1 School,  he did not attend college there.   

Try to stay dry.  My contacts at INDOT says they are filling sandbags non-stop in anticipation of significant flooding the next few days.  

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