Oh, so many things. For instance, I had no idea that I had no idea how a telegraph works. I wouldn’t even have considered that it is an essentially electrified machine. It works with batteries and electric currents? Really? Huh.

I had no idea that Samuel Morse didn’t really invent the telegraph. He just went ahead and asked the real inventor, Joseph Henry, how Henry’s telegraph machine worked and put together some patent applications.

I also had no idea that Samuel Morse thought there was a vast Catholic conspiracy in the world and that a mode of instanteous communication, as provided by the telegraph, was a way to combat the mystical powers wielded by the Catholics and Jesuits.

All that and I’m not even past the first chapter yet.

Today, I learned that the Federalists got around this contentious idea by having the people be the source of ultimate sovereignty. Any government is merely the agent of the moment, and no government can be fully representational of the people.

The people hold the final power. The national and state governments are always subservient to the sovereign entity that is the citizenry.

It’s a pretty amazing idea, and one that we’ve kind of lost sight of these days. We’ve grown accustomed to having Washington be in charge.

I’m going to think about this for a bit.

Today, I learned that James Madison was a Nationalist (according to Gordon S. Wood). Madison was the primary author of The Virginia Plan, which took the United States away from being a confederation and into being a country with a strong central government. In fact, in this proposal to the Constitutional Convention, he wanted the national Congress to be able to overturn and rule invalid state legislative acts in much the same way that the courts do.

If you’re not a history fan, this may not mean anything much. Now that I know much more than I used to though, this floored me. Madison was so close with Thomas Jefferson and founded the Democratic Party with him. They opposed the Federalists and their nationalist agenda by touting personal liberty, local rule, and state sovereignty.

Of course, I always forget that he is one of the writers of the Federalist Papers because it’s too easy to lump him in with the Virginians. When learning history, it’s customary to teach opposites: Federalists and Jeffersonians, North and South, Nationalists and States’ Rightists. Plus… Virginia went on to make such a stink about states’ rights closer to the Civil War.

Now I know better. Many in the South actually wanted a stronger central government than what was provided by the Articles of Confederation and many in the mid-Atlantic states (plus New Jersey, which proposed the “opposition” plan to Madison’s at the Constitutional Convention) wanted to keep local rule.

Regionalism as a prism for looking at US history has it’s place, but I have obviously made it be too harsh a filter if I have forgotten so much about James Madison.

By the way, I’m almost done with this book, and it is a really good one. A full write-up will come later.

These blew my mind today.

From Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter 1860-1861: It was considered unseemly to campaign for yourself during Lincoln’s days. Others could campaign for you but if it seemed like you wanted to be President too badly, the people didn’t vote for you. So in the crucial months before the Southern states left, Lincoln didn’t even make speeches, travel, and campaign very much at all. There was a cone of silence for everyone.

Come to think of it, can we reinstate this practice?

From The Making of a Philosopher: In talking about the mind/body problem (essentially that our minds, thoughts, and consciousness do not match up exactly to the physicality of our brains), Colin McGinn suggests that the connection may be beyond our ability to figure it out. It is beyond our perceptions, our reality. It is beyond our mental capability because that is constrained to our actualities.

There are certain ideas for which we simply cannot think to its actual truth. Wow.

Of course I know that there are issues for which it seems like there is no final answer, but I never really considered that certain close-to-truth explanations may be impossibilities.

And here, it seems, regardless of our delusions of grander, is the real difference between God and Man.

Now, I find out that Napoleon didn’t win all his battles leading up to his self-coronation. He was just very good at telling the French people that he was a winner. He knew the importance of controlling information and effective propaganda.

The tireless energy that helped him be so effective as a military leader also led him to do some really remarkable things as ruler of a country. In many ways, he betrayed the revolutionary democratic movement that swept away the royals, but he was also the one who codified equality and brotherhood into French society through new laws and merit-based promotions.

On the first of the year, I decided that as a military history nut, I know far too little about Napoleon than is decent. I have some books waiting on the bookshelf, but for now, I’ve started a PBS Napoleon video.

Man, the guy was from Corsica, which the French took over just four months before his birth. Napoleon grew up hating the French and always feeling like the outsider.

He tried to help his native country gain its independence back, but that didn’t work out (<–extra shortened version). Now spurned, he turned towards his surrogate homeland.

Isn’t that interesting?

I’ve just finished listening to the audio version of E=mc2: A Biography of the World’s Most Famous Equation by David Bodanis. It is a fascinating and surprisingly accessible book. But that’s for another post.

I learned so many things, but when he describes the first man-made application of this famous equation, it’s hard not to be moved.

First, the bomb over Hiroshima actually exploded above ground. Did you know that? If it had exploded like a conventional bomb, detonating as it hit the ground, it would have created a !gigantic! crater and caused so much more extensive (and perhaps unwanted) damage.

One-third of the bomb’s total energy would have been released in the initial flash. This could melt and peel skin.

The ensuing force of the explosion would push the air around it outwards at speeds exceeding the speed of sound. So if you were far enough away to survive the first detonation, wind would whip by you faster than the most powerful of hurricanes and tornadoes.

And eerily, it would be silent. Because the sound of this moving wall of air has been left behind.

If you managed to survive this, you’d be exposed to a vacuum. There is no air left behind. Like in space, a vacuum can make people explode. If you scream, there would be no sound, because there’s no air to carry it.

But the vacuum wouldn’t last, because once the force of the nuclear blast wanes, nature rushes to fill that vacuum.

All the air comes flooding back in another huge gush.

And that’s just a part of what happens in the first few seconds.

Somewhere between school and now, I lost track of what the academics think about how we, humans, got here. I didn’t even know that I didn’t know until this article from the latest Smithsonian Magazine.

It says that all humans came out of Africa. That I knew. But it also says that as humans migrated out of Africa, those moving into Europe ran into the indigenous peoples already there—the Neanderthals. Then the two groups competed for resources and supremacy. That’s fascinating.

And when humans moved into unpopulated areas, where they automatically became the top life form, innovation would not be that important. For example, the aboriginal peoples in places like Australia would not have had to invent and develop new ways of doing things because they didn’t face overpopulation and scarcity of resources.

In the April 2008 edition of the Smithsonian Magazine, I learned that it is scientifically accepted that “[e]very major galaxy, [. . .] has a black hole at its core.” This includes our own Milky Way. And my mind is blown.

Black holes are awesome and scary and fascinating. They are like some kind of movie monsters become real–Once they get you, you can’t escape, and nobody knows what happens to anything that disappears into them.

To make matters even more interesting, the researchers predict that in about two billion years, the Milky Way and our closest neighboring galaxy, Andromeda, are going to move into each other and merge. Then the two central black holes will collide. Seriously, how cool is that?

I’m glad I’m not going to be around for it though.