{"id":625,"date":"2005-02-06T09:03:43","date_gmt":"2005-02-06T16:03:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/archives\/625"},"modified":"2005-02-06T09:03:43","modified_gmt":"2005-02-06T16:03:43","slug":"mermaids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/archives\/625","title":{"rendered":"Mermaids"},"content":{"rendered":"

I read this story<\/a> with wonder and awe. Not because of the amazing medical technology necessary to cure the condition, but because it’s a folktale come to life. Mermaids–one of the wonders of the ancient seas. Looking at that picture I have to wonder if I’m looking at the source of those tales.<\/p>\n

Of course the implication for those involved when the first baby was born were probably not very good. A superstitious people would see not a medical flaw, but a sign. A punishment from the gods, perhaps. Or more likely a sign that the mother, despite denials, had been unfaithful, and with some sort of sea creature no less.<\/p>\n

Reading the story I feel as if I’ve found the tiny nugget of truth in the story. The truth that may be embedded in every folk tale.<\/p>\n

From such a birth the tale would expand. Each storyteller would elaborate a little more, until the original story was unrecognizable. And then tales would branch off from there, until we end up with Hans Christian Andersen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, before you laugh at our superstitious ancestors, and take pride in how much science and education have allowed us to progress. Take a quick look at Snopes<\/a> and ask yourself if we’re really that different.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I read this story with wonder and awe. Not because of the amazing medical technology necessary to cure the condition, but because it’s a folktale come to life. Mermaids–one of the wonders of the ancient seas. Looking at that picture I have to wonder if I’m looking at the source of those tales. Of course […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-health-nature"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/sefxA-mermaids","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}