Remember Tianamen Massacre

When the Celtics-Lakers Dominations Ended

Tonight, for the first time since 1979, the National Basketball Assciation championship series began without the Boston Celtics or the Los Angeles Lakers.
Uh oh.

The Filipino Song in Mothra vs Gojira

The lyrics are:
Naintindihan mo
Naiintindihan mo ba?
Mayroon ba doon?
Pumunta ka lang dito.
Halika't maupo.

Translated thus: Did you understand? Is there something there? You just come here. Come and sit. Of course, they made it "Japanese" by lenghtening the "na-i-i-intindihan mo." Thanks Ed Lejano for the very important trivia (ergo, no longer trivial)
The two girls are two tiny twin girls known as the Shojobin. They are trying to explain that the egg found by the three heroes came from Mothra Island and that the egg must be returned at all cost. So Mothra went on to destroy Tokyo. Why? Because the Shojobin were singing in Tagalog and people from the Mothra Island (re: Wengweng Island) are better left ignored.
This is all I got from the musical director Akira Ikufube. He was a composer of classical music. Note among his works: Overture to the Nation of Philippines (1944). Twenty years later, he came back with this haunting music in Mothra vs Gojira.

Columbus Introduced Syphilis

Well, he didn't get it from the Philippines but I'm sure the blame game switched directions this time. Scientific American is now saying Columbus, or maybe his men, introduced syphilis in their return in 1493 to Europe. The first recorded case was in 1495. So the basic theory is that syphilis came from the New World, which is, sing it Lea Salonga, the South or now the Third World or the developing world.

Researchers from Emory University in Atlanta report in the online journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases that they used phylogenetics—the study of the evolutionary link between organisms—to study 26 geographically scattered strains of a family of bacteria known as Treponemes, which are behind the sexually transmitted disease syphilis as well as related nonvenereal infections such as yaws. They found that the venereal syphilis-causing strains arose relatively recently in humans and are closely related to an ancient infection isolated in South America that gives rise to yaws.

As Anthony Hopkins said in Dracula, civilization is always followed by syphilization. We gave their VDs and their nights were never the same again.
Yes, dearie. It's not only potatoes which we gifted you.

Billy Joel's History Lesson

Few know that Bily Joel is a history buff and "We Didn't Start The Fire" is his gift to history-challenged listeners. The problem is that the video of that song was just him and flames. Now here's the references.

14.8

That's the number of years that the wife should be younger than the husband to maximize the number of living offsprings to reach 18 years. This is Scientific American speaking, man, not FHM or Playboy. So our 1/2 plus 7 rule is even conservative. More details. The study was done in Sweden over two centuries. You can not dispute that! Purists, however, may say that the study was made on one group in Sweden and the records were culled from 16th and 17th century but who cares? He he he

The Whole Human History in 100 words

At the UP (University of Pennsylvania) a professor history gives 100-word lectures on the biggest things in life. lan Charles Kors, the George H. Walker Endowed Term Professor of History, could give his whole lecture in one SMS message. For world history, Kors's course is:

• First, tribes: tough life.
• The defaults beyond the intimate tribe were violence, aversion to difference, and slavery. Superstition: everywhere.
• Culture overcomes them partially.
• Rainfall agriculture, which allows loners.
• Irrigation agriculture, which favors community.
• Division of labor plus exchange in trade bring mutual cooperation, even outside the tribe.
• The impulse is always there, though: "Kill or enslave the outsider."
• Gradual science from Athens' compact with reason.
• Division of labor, trade, the mastery of knowledge, plus time brought surplus, sometimes a peaceful extended order and, rules diversely evolved and, the cooperation of strangers - always warring against the fierce defaults of tribalism, violence, and ignorance.
• No one who teaches you knows what will happen.

I am so impressed until I learned that UP has a lot more 60-second lectures. This is part of their "Eschew Excess Verbiage" series.