Joy Ride

Great Ideas of the 20th Century: a series
to be continued

Holocaust

Tonight is Erev Yom Hashoah, the eve of Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Attacks on Jews

Old Stupid Joke:

A guy goes to a doctor and says he sees spots.
The doctor says "ïnteresting."
The fellow continues, "I hear a ringing in my ears."
The doctor nods.
"änd I have a tingling feeling in my fingers !" says the patient.
"Have you had this before?" asks the doctor.
"Yes" says the patient.
"Well" says the doctor, "you've got it again."

* * * Well we've got it again.

New Year (1999)

January 1, 1999

In 3 days it'll be the first day of 2012.
Today's Golden Oldie is from the first day of 1999.

Mr. Shuldig and his dog Doobie are my favorite characters. I can allow Shudig to express gushy, sweet, and optimistic thoughts knowing that Doobie's blunt realism will rescue the cartoon from a sugary overdose.

* * * Speaking of "Dog Years", there is an online site on the topic. It begins with:

"A widely held belief is that one dog year is the same as 7 human years. Although that could be used as a very rough guide, it ends up being misleading, especially when used to calculate younger or older dogs. That could be a problem in certain situations such as figuring out pet insurance, or the health of a dog (whether a veterinarian checkup is needed, etc)." -more (includes a dogyear/humanyear calculator

Roller Coaster (1991)

Today's cartoon is from January 1991.

It marked the start of the last decade of the 20th century. Events were moving at breathtaking speed. Those war clouds over the Gulf would soon drift our way, and before the end of the month we Israelis would be trying to live normal lives while wearing gas masks!

But we didn't know that yet.

* * * Twenty years ago this month!

Hanukka (1999)

Today's cartoon is from 1999.

It was the last Hanukka of the 20th Century.
We are now in the tenth year of the 21st Century
...and the first night of Hanukka is tomorrow.

Happy Holiday!
Hag Sameah!

Armchair Adventurer

Back in the 20th century, a husband and wife team of "futurists" wrote a revolutionary book. It was a best-seller that excited us all about the fast-moving and confusing world of tomorrow that was rushing towards us.

It was a book of prophecy that was a hot cocktail party topic. The book was called Future Shock. Although published as the work of Alvin Toffler, his wife Heidi is now credited as co-author.

Those of us who are old enough to have read Future Shock when it was first published are now amazed to find ourselves living here, in the future that was described.

Some Toffler Quotes:

"Future shock is the dizzying disorientation brought on by the premature arrival of the future."

"Our technological powers increase, but the side effects and potential hazards also escalate."

“The future arrives too soon and in the wrong order”

* * * If you're interested in the history of "futurists" and "futurology", here's something from "Wikipedia:

"in the mid-1940s the first professional "futurist" consulting institutions like RAND and SRI began to engage in long-range planning, systematic trend watching, scenario development, and visioning, at first under WWII military and government contract and, beginning in the 1950s, for private institutions and corporations. The period from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s laid the conceptual and methodological foundations of the modern futures studies field. Bertrand de Jouvenel's The Art of Conjecture in 1963 and Dennis Gabor's Inventing the Future in 1964 are considered key early works, and the first U.S. university course devoted entirely to the future was taught by futurist Alvin Toffler at The New School in 1966" -more

Hebrew Calendar (1994)

Today's Golden Oldie is a Dry Bones cartoon done 15 years ago for Sukkot in 1994.

Back then folks were beginning to get excited about the dawn of a new century (on the civil calendar). In 1994, the holiday fell in August. This year it begins at the end of next week, on Friday evening October 2.

Antisemitism (1991)

Today's Golden Oldie is from August 1991.

I decided to see what was happening 18 years ago and this cartoon turned up. It is unfortunately totally appropriate.

Today's news is about "Aftonbladet" which claims to be the leading daily newspaper in Sweden and in Scandinavia, with a readership of more than 1.5 million. The paper has just published a brand new version of the classic antisemitic blood libel. Here's the report from Israel National News:

Swedish Tabloid: IDF Kills Arabs to Trade their Organs

(IsraelNN.com) "The tabloid Aftonbladet, one of Sweden’s most popular newspapers, published a report Tuesday that claimed IDF soldiers execute Arabs in Judea and Samaria, harvest their organs and sell them. The report carried a photograph that purportedly shows the body of a victim of such an execution, with a large scar running from his chin to his abdomen. It notes the IDF’s explanation that the scar is from an autopsy which is routinely performed on people who are killed in fighting – but seems not to give it much credit and prefers a completely unsubstantiated claim by Arabs regarding forced organ harvesting." -more

A newspaper in SWEDEN!!!??
Yikes!
Your thoughts?

Back in the Nineties (1998)

Today's Golden Oldie is from September 28, 1998.
Ten years ago this month.
Back then the 21st Century was on the horizon ...and I was speculating about how people looking back would think of the Nineties as the old days.

So here we are, doing just that!
And if I was one of the "old guys" back then, what am I now?!?

Yikes!

God is Politically Incorrect (1994)

Yesterday's cartoon was about the fix that we've gotten into with Political Correctness messing up our thinking. Today's Golden Oldie examined the situation back in 1994

It's hard to believe, but back in the 20th Century, the idea of God no longer being relevant was seriously debated. Here in the 21st Century, of course, belief in God has made an astounding impact on our lives. The Time Mag cover is from April 8, 1966