As we were all taught in grade school, the Eskimos came across the land bridge from Russia, which broke once they were across, and then they settled down and built igloos, invented 37 words for snow, made parkas with fur around the face, and fished. the teacher would note that some continued to go south, and eventually populated the rest of the Americas, where they spent their time raising Maize and not inventing the wheel, hanging around wearing loincloths, and playing a game that involved putting a rubber ball through a stone circle. They also invented chocolate. Then the Spanish came, and –
Hold on, Teacher, why didn’t the Eskimos keep moving south?
We don’t know.
But why would anyone stay there? Especially when the rest of the guys are moving on?
We don’t know.
So the Eskimos are sitting in snow up to their eyebrows, and some guys say “hey, we’re going to keep moving, because this sucks,” and the Eskimos stay because they think it can’t possibly get any better?
We don’t know.
Also, some technological prognostication: videopaint.
The Wrights first flew a controlled heavier-than-aircraft over a century ago, on this date in 1903. On the hundredth anniversary, I wrote three articles that are still worth reading if you haven’t, or rereading if you have. They contain a lot of lessons for spaceflight development.
[Update a couple minutes later]
I notice that the TCS Daily link from the old Instapundit post is busted. Here‘s another one.
I think that today is the thirty-eighth anniversary of the day that Gene Cernan climbed back into the LEM and headed off to lunar orbit with Jack Schmitt to meet up with the command module for the trip back to earth (perhaps depending on what time zone you use). Humans haven’t walked on the moon since, for many reasons, but foremost because too many people think that the only way to return was the way we went the first time, with massive government expenditures and a big rocket. This false perception has held us back for almost four decades now.
Thoughts from Eugene Volokh. I found interesting the comment about the intrinsic incompatibility between Christian and Jewish law in this regard. But I agree with Glenn — if father/daughter relations are an intrinsic part of the culture at Columbia University, academia is in even bigger trouble than we thought.
Sixty-nine years later, there aren’t many survivors of Pearl Harbor left. The war itself is passing out of living memory. And sadly, many of the lessons learned from it will probably have to be relearned, at the cost of how knows how many more innocent lives.
[Update a few minutes later]
Bing remembers. But it’s just another day to Google. You’d think it a significant date even to a “citizen of the world.”
I think the answers are yes, and no. This artificial distinction between “genocide” and the mass murder on a grander scale by Stalin, Mao et al is just a means to distract from the fact that Hitler was not the worst man in history, and that his depredations were actually typical of the left.