GAD: an ancient Semitic diety of good fortune

GAD was one of at least two gods worshipped by the Jews while they were staying in Babylon in addition to their main God (the other one being Meni, the God of fate). Its not necessarily true that they all worshipped him, but this was a very popular deity amonst non-Jews in the area too, and since he was the God of Fortune, it probably seemed like a wise thing to worship him becase they really wanted fortune to smile on them so they could get back to Israel, from which most of the Jews were forced to leave by the Babylonian King Nebuchadrezzar in the 6th Century BCE. Most of us would have thought the most salient aspect of Judaism was monotheism, but this clearly isn't how it started out, or if it did there were many centuries of lapsing back into polytheism. This is why Prophets kept showing up, like Ezekiel and Elijah, to condemn Jews for having lapsed into idolatry. But even these chastisements have to be understood in the context of the many edits that the books that comprise the Bible/Torah, and that in the original they might have had references to deities like Gad. In Isaiah, as a matter of fact, Gad and Meni are mentioned as being deities worshipped by Israelites, but this part is usually left out of most Bible translations. Moses of course was supposed to have gone up to mount Sinai and received the ten commandments from God, and the very first one, the most important, was that the Lord is the only god and there shouldn't be any others worshipped. But this part was surely written after the worship of Gad, the whole book of Exodus may have been written after the events of the Babylonian captivity.

It's also interesting to note that one of the lost tribes of the Israelites was named Gad -- and that these folks were condemned as Israel's enemy in the books of Kings and Samuel. Perhaps they were worshippers of Gad after the return of the Israelites from the last Baylonian captivity (when Cyrus of Persia conquered Babylon and let them come back), whereas the others went whole hog back to monotheism.

Another way that traces of Gad survive even to this day is with my Grandmother, who on occasion has been known to exlaim, "Oh, my Gad!"

BURLINGAME: a 19th century American diplomat, a treaty and a couple of cities named after him, a victim of 9/11, his sister, a high school, an author

Anson Burlingame was born in 1820 and died in 1970, and is most famous for being the US minister (a 19th century equivalent of ambassador I think) to China during the Lincoln administration, and author The Burlingame Treaty, which gave China most favored nation status for trading and gave the Chinese many of the same rights of immigration and status that were enjoyed by some of the European powers. He served from 1961 until his death, he managed to be in China during the civil war. That must have been weird for him. Burlingame had, before serving the newly formed Republican party, been a Free Soiler and then a Know Nothing in the House of Representatives. These terms are only relevant to the time in which he was living, but had to do with the divisions between the Democrats and the other parties that led to the Civil War. Basically the Democrats were the party of Slave owning Southern Aristocrats, and they were quite intent on extending slavery to the new territories to the West, -- though this would have meant expanding their influence and power in Washington as well and giving them control over the Senate and possibly the House as well. Different political forces were coalescing to oppose the Democrats influence, which had been felt since Andrew Jackson's polarizing Presidential terms 1829-37. The Fee Soilers had a platform of wanting to open up the West to settlement through incentives, while forbidding the expansion of Slavery. Not because they wanted Slavery to be abolished necessarily, and not all of them were abolitionists, nor were all abolitionists not racists necessarily either. Eventually these forces, the Free Soilers, Know Nothings and others came together to form the new Republican party, and when they managed to get a president elected -- Lincoln -- the result was Southern succession and the Civil War.

Charles Burlingame was the Pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which was flown into the Pentagon on Septeber 11, 2001. His Sister Debra is a reactionary attorney who has written columns for the Wall Street Journal and who was instrumental in sinking the proposed International Freedom Center at the World Trade Center site. The Center was supposed to be a museum about various genocides and crimes against humanity through history; she used her influence along with other ignorant fire breathers to stop the center being built because she said the center had nothing to do with crimes against humanity in general; this was unique and somehow the center was seen as celebrating the terrorists.

Jeff Burlingame is a music PR guy and writer, he wrote a well regarded biography of Kurt Cobain.

Burlingame High School is in Burlingame, California, a very wealthy town near San Francisco. The three children of Kathryn Crosby Grant (blogged about by myself a couple of months ago) went there.

SASHA ALEXANDER: Another Los Angeles Actor of Moderate Fame

Being that my blog subjects are chosen randomly, I do end up with a lot of short blogs about minor celebrities or sports people who I had never heard of, and who nevertheless about whom I am compelled wax poetic. Oh Sasha Alexander, a TV star many would recognize. But I haven't lived in a place with TV reception for almost 10 years now, and I haven't had the chance to catch any of the shows that you appeared in. Apparently you had a major role in the tv series NCIS, which sounds like a copycat show of CSI, the twist being that you were part of a team of investigators from the Navy instead of a special investigative division of the police.
Congratulations on the birth of your daughter Lucia, I always liked that name. That's pretty cool that your stepmama is Sophia Loren, or will be whenever you and Lucia's father do get married. Hey, you're living in fornication, as the born again owner of a pet store once told my (now) wife.

PRISMATOID: A shape beloved of geometers and industrial designers

A Prismatoid is a polyhedron where all the vertices lie in 2 planes. So this could be a pyramid, or so many other things. If the two planes have the same number of vertices then it is a prismoid, a subset of prismatoid.

The simplest prismatoid you could have would be a 3 sided pyramid --a single vertex on one plane and 3 on another. the next simplest would be a wedge, 2 vertices on one plane and 3 on the other. The 3rd most would be 3 on each plane, which is also the simplest prismoid you could create.