Mummy powder, anyone?

Beginning with Arab physicians in the Middle Ages, and continuing for centuries afterward in Europe and the Middle East, it was widely believed that powder made from ground up Egyptian mummies was a powerful medicine. The fancier the mummy, the more medicinal power it was believed to possess.

How's that for a random weekend factoid?

Absent thee from felicity awhile

Goat Rope is winding down a long series on Hamlet. We're now at the dead-bodies-all-over-the-floor part, which in Shakespeare is a pretty good sign the end is near.

Hamlet has been poisoned and is shuffling off this mortal coil, but he still manages to get in some great lines. One that I've always wondered about was this:

You that look pale and tremble at this chance,
That are but mutes or audience to this act,
Had I but time--as this fell sergeant, death,
Is strict in his arrest--O, I could tell you--
But let it be.

What would he have said that he hadn't said already?

His last request is that Horatio to "report me and my cause aright/ to the unsatisfied." Horatio, claiming to be "more antique Roman than Dane" reaches for the cup of poison. Hamlet stops him with lines that have always struck me for their beauty:

If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart
Absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
To tell my story.

Horatio agrees and as the curtain closes prepares to tell the tale to those who have stumbled onto the scene of carnage. It's kind of a circular ending, with the story we're just seen or read about to be told. And so it rolls on through the centuries.

GIT R DONE. Here's the latest twist on health care reform. I say get it over with.

THE OTHER WARM BEVERAGE. Here's an item from the UK Guardian on the Coffee Party.

URGENT ANCIENT CHINESE MUMMY UPDATE here.

TENDER SUBJECT. El Cabrero was surprised this morning to find this article on Alternet that suggest goats are the new cows. It starts like this:

Goat is a great way for people to eat locally grown, humanely raised, tasty foods. And unlike the cattle industries, there aren't any massive, industrialized goat farms.

That's probably because if goats ever became a class of urban proletarians, there would be no way of containing their revolutionary militancy.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Two bad ideas

Two bad dogs.

It occurs to El Cabrero after reflecting on human history that two really bad ideas have shown up over and over and done lots of harm.

The first one is the belief that we can do X to Y and it will be over and there will be no consequences.

The second is that we can do whatever we want over here and it will have no effect anywhere else.

Does the Gentle Reader have any other suggestions?

IT'S ALIVE. There is movement on health care reform in the US Senate.

AND SO IS support for a public option in health care reform.

SPEAKING OF HEALTH, coal may not be all that good for it.

THE CURSE OF THE MUMMY may have been heart disease.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

I herd that

Don't even think about it.

Sometimes one good book will lead to another. I recently read and highly recommend Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate, even though I'm sure it will bust the bubbles of many readers who are uncomfortable about our animal origins.

In that book, he pretty much demolishes some cherished ideas, such as the belief that all human behaviors are purely social constructions ("the blank slate"), that all nasty human traits are the result of culture ("the noble savage"), and that our minds are somehow floating ghosts that haunt the region of our heads ("the ghost in the machine").

In one part of the book, Pinker revisited the ideas of Thomas Hobbes and referred to a study by Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen that found that

violent cultures arise in societies that are beyond the reach of law and in which precious assets are easily stolen. Societies that herd animals meet both conditions. Herders tend to live in territories that are unsuitable for growing crops and thus far from the centers of government. And their major asset, livestock, is easier to steal than the major asset of farmers, land. In herding societies a man can be stripped of his wealth (and of his ability to acquire wealth) in a blink. Men in that milieu cultivate a hair trigger for violent retaliation, not just against rustlers, but against anyone who would test their resolve by signs of disrespect that could reveal them to be easy pickings for rustlers.

Golly willikers, I wonder what it would be like to grow up in a culture like that? And keep your hands of my goats, bub...

But seriously, that is an interesting idea. Sometimes cultural norms often long outlive the situation that gave birth to them. But if you think about it, many people all over the US and the world live in situations where there is no positive relationship with a governing authority and where all the perceived good things of life--from respect and status to money and valuables--can be taken away.

CRYSTAL BALL. Here is one prediction about the near future of the economy in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia. Short version: bad but maybe not as bad as the nation as a whole. That'd be a switch.

OWN TO RENT. Economist Deal Baker proposes a simple solution to the foreclosure crisis here.

URGENT MUMMY UPDATE here.

THE SOUL IN THE STONE. An archaeological artifact reveals ancient attitudes towards immortality.


GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED