Flat Earther for President

We have this common misconception that before Columbus everyone believed the Earth is flat. It makes perfect sense that we believe this false thing since it's generally presented that way in school. Hey, it makes for a good story!

"The intrepid explorer, Christopher Columbus, despite warnings that the world was flat, set out in his ships to prove everyone wrong by going around the Earth to establish new trade routes! He faced constant threat of mutiny as all of his crew feared they were going to go over the edge of the world! But he persevered and finally landed in a brand, new world!"

Something like that, anyway.

The truth is, though, that educated people didn't believe that. The Greeks figured out that the world was round well over 1500 years before Columbus stepped foot on a ship. It had been accepted knowledge for a long, long time before the Middle Ages began. Accepted by the educated, that is. The "common" people were a different story.

There were exceptions. Every so often, someone (educated) would come along, usually on religious grounds of some sort, and declare that the Earth was flat. Anyone could look around and see that that was true. Plus, you know, "The Bible!" No one should listen to "science"!

It made sense to the uneducated masses. Sure, look around, because anyone can clearly see that the Earth is flat and all this "science" talk of a spherical planet is part of some rigged system trying to take advantage us!

The truth was that the common people, being uneducated, couldn't understand the science. It took explorers going out and sailing around the world, all the way around the world, before the idea of a flat Earth became a thing of the past.

Mostly a thing of the past, since there is still a Flat Earth Society with people in it who cling to this idea that the science is a fraud and the Earth is actually flat. Or that the science is just wrong, or the scientists just aren't smart enough to decipher the information correctly. Obviously, the Earth is still as flat today as it ever was.

The rest of us, though, don't give these people much credence. It's an idea that doesn't deserve much more than an eye roll and a "Oh, you're one of those people" responses. Because, you know, there's more than just science to back up the fact that the Earth is a sphere. People have been up there and out there and seen it.

Can you imagine if a Flat Earther ran for President?

I can, because we have that going on right now.

We have the science that shows that man-induced climate change is happening. Educated people who understand the science virtually all agree that this is what is happening. The problem we're having with that is people looking around, much as the uneducated masses did during the Middle Ages, and not seeing the curve of the Earth. Or the larger picture. Whatever.

They're seeing things like what I saw posted on Facebook recently, "What climate change? It's 51 here in [place withheld]!" They're seeing the arctic vortexes and, well, whatever it is they're seeing is not the pattern. They're still grasping onto "global warming" and allowing harsh winters to mask "climate change."

And, then, we have someone like Donald Trump come along and say things like, "There is no drought in California." He's the religious nut (not that he's religious) from the Middle Ages coming along and saying, "The Earth is flat!" He doesn't know or understand the science, and he doesn't want to. It wouldn't actually surprise me if the next "wacky" thing to come out of his mouth was actually, "The world is flat!" It would fit right in with his statements that climate change is a hoax and that the science is bullshit.

The sad part is that I'm not sure if he did come out and say that the Earth is flat if that would dissuade his supporters.

Great Pumpkins! (an IWSG post)

Last IWSG, I was talking about how late it was that we planted our garden this year. And it was. Very late. You can go read about that here.

As late it was planted, though, it is doing very well, now. Sure, we didn't get things like tomatoes as early as everyone else, but we're getting them faster than we can eat them, now. In fact, it's time to start making and freezing sauce.

The above picture is the first three pumpkins to come off the vines. There are three more I'm going to get soon (in fact, by the time this posts, I will probably already have gotten them). AND the vines have suddenly put out all kinds of new growth, so there may be more pumpkins next month! Or early November. And here, that's a totally doable thing, because they're not going to freeze.

The picture above, still showing the pumpkins, also shows "the monster." Or, shall I say, "the attack of the killer tomato vine." [My kids totally accused me of making it up when I told them about the movie Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!] Let me just make it perfectly clear: We did not plant this particular tomato vine. It grew there all on its own.

You can't really see the placement of the vine in the picture, but it's right next to the front door of our house. Back behind the "the monster" is the gate to the backyard. My daughter hates this tomato plant, because it keeps growing over the sidewalk leading to the front door (no matter how often I cut it back), and it has grown up and through the lattice by the front door, so it attacks people is they go in and out of our house.

Now, I just want to be clear, here. We are in the middle of the worst drought on record in California. I did not water this plant for the entire month of July and most of August. I was hoping that by not watering it, it would, you know, scale itself back. Not grow so crazily. But it did grow crazily even without the water and, today, when I was picking tomatoes, I got as many off of it as I did off of all of other vines, the vines we actually planted and took care of, combined. In fact, I didn't finish picking from it, because I ran out of storage space, so I got an equivalent amount and left A LOT behind. It is The Monster.

When the vine first started growing, my wife wanted me to pull it up. "It's in a bad place; it will never survive; we don't even know what kind of tomato that is." But I didn't see any reason to just pull it up. My idea was to just let it grow and see what happened. Of course, since then, my daughter has been the big advocate for killing it, but my wife doesn't want to do that anymore. Mostly, I think, she is just amazed at it. I know I am. What a huge success from such an unexpected source.

Which is the point. We don't ever really know what's going to take off and be successful and what's, despite our best efforts, just going to sit there going nowhere. Or just piddle along. Or whatever. It's like when you work really hard on something, something you think is great, and show it to someone and he just shrugs at it and says, basically, "So." But, then, you have this other thing that you just threw together and don't think is anything special and someone comes along and really loves it. Really loves it. As in, "This is great!"

So you nurture your ideas and let them grow, even the ones you don't think will go anywhere, because you may just end up with something huge. As I mentioned recently, that is how Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles started out.

And you may end up with some pumpkins, too. Things that take a lot of work, that look doubtful for a while, but yield a nice prize at the end. By the way, between the beginning of this post and now, I did go out and pull those other three pumpkins. They're in a nice pile on my table, at the moment, and we have big plans for them. It's all a matter of keeping your options open and not closing off ideas just because you don't think they will amount to anything. I mean, "the monster" grew out of rocks, basically in a completely inhospitable environment, with people trampling on it and no water. And, well, my daughter's scared of it because it wants to eat her. That's what she says, anyway.

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