Random Posts

[Bact PhD]

This bit of archaeology (is it still "archaeology" if the time period in question is "only" a century old?) is interesting.

Not since the 1970s has there been such an important discovery from the Great War in France. In woods on a ridge not far from the city of Reims, the bodies of more than 270 German soldiers have lain for more than a century - after they died the most agonising deaths imaginable.

Forgotten in the confusion of war, their exact location was till now a mystery - one which the French and German authorities were in no hurry to elucidate. But thanks to the work of a father-and-son team of local historians, the entrance to the Winterberg tunnel on the Chemin des Dames battlefront has been found.

[snip]

The two governments are still deliberating, but time presses. Because if the tunnel's location is in theory still a secret, it is a secret that has been badly kept.

When I visited the spot a few days ago, it was to discover that bounty-hunters had been the night before. A three-metre deep hole had been dug near the entrance, and a collection of wartime artefacts - axes, spades and pit-props as well as unexploded shells - left in a heap.

[andydp]

If they don't do something looters will do the job for them.

[Bact PhD]

It’s already shaping up to be that way, sadly enough.

[LFC]

That middle dude, Georg, looks eerily like my nephew who is 1/2 German and 1/8 German-Swiss.

[Bact PhD]

We definitely take modern shipping for granted, not giving much thought to what Ariel's Pacific counterpart might find these days.

Since the end of November, this is some of what has sunk to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean: vacuum cleaners; Kate Spade accessories; at least $150,000 of frozen shrimp; and three shipping containers full of children’s clothes. “If anybody has investments in deep-sea salvage, there's some beautiful product down there,” Richard Westenberger, chief financial officer of the children’s clothing brand Carter’s told a conference recently.

You can blame the weather, a surge in US imports tied to the pandemic, or a phenomenon known as parametric rolling.

All told, at least 2,980 containers have fallen off cargo ships in the Pacific since November, in at least six separate incidents. That’s more than twice the number of containers lost annually between 2008 and 2019, according to the World Shipping Council.

[LFC]

Mar 23, 2021 19:26:00 GMT Bact PhD said:

We definitely take modern shipping for granted, not giving much thought to what Ariel's Pacific counterpart might find these days.

I'm sure that shrimp will be welcome down in the bottom of the ocean!

[Bact PhD]

Nothing like a multidisciplinary approach, including linguistics, paleobiology, and genetics, to find that the likely origin of the Black Death to be a century earlier than has been held by historians:

For over 20 years, I’ve been telling the same story to students whenever I teach European history. At some point in the 14th century, the bacterium Yersinia pestis somehow moved out of the rodent population in western China and became wildly infectious and lethal to humans. This bacterium caused the Black Death, a plague pandemic that moved from Asia to Europe in just a few decades, wiping out one-third to one-half of all human life wherever it touched. Although the plague pandemic definitely happened, the story I’ve been teaching about when, where, and the history of the bacterium has apparently been incomplete, at best.

In December, the historian Monica Green published a landmark article, The Four Black Deaths, in the American Historical Review, that rewrites our narrative of this brutal and transformative pandemic. In it, she identifies a “big bang” that created four distinct genetic lineages that spread separately throughout the world and finds concrete evidence that the plague was already spreading from China to central Asia in the 1200s. This discovery pushes the origins of the Black Death back by over a hundred years, meaning that the first wave of the plague was not a decades-long explosion of horror, but a disease that crept across the continents for over a hundred years until it reached a crisis point.

[Bact PhD]

This piece about fashion had me groaning (IMO “midi” length skirts and dresses should have died with disco):

www.cnn.com/2021/04/02/cnn-underscored/nordstrom-fashion-finds-under-100/index.html?iid=CNNUnderscoredHPcontainermobileweb

And this description really had me scratching my head;

House of Want Newbie Vegan Leather Shoulder Bag ($78; nordstrom.com)

Excuse me, but what in the *hell* is “vegan leather”?!??

[LFC]

Apr 4, 2021 21:30:25 GMT Bact PhD said:

Excuse me, but what in the *hell* is “vegan leather”?!??

It's the skin left over from making Fakin' Bacon.

[LFC]

It looks like the real Sweet Meteor O' Death might come from Yellowstone and sooner than previously expected. Have a nice day!

Researchers analyzing minerals in fossilized ash from the most recent mega-eruption of Yellowstone National Park’s supervolcano say that it is due to blow up again much sooner than previously thought—and may wipe life off Earth in a matter of decades, National Geographic reports.

The Arizona State University researchers have found that the supervolcano could potentially send out more than 1,000 cubic kilometers of ash, which is 2,500 times more material than blew from Mount St. Helens in 1980, The New York Times reports. This could cover most of the United States and force the entire planet into a volcanic winter.

The supervolcano’s last giant eruption was over 630,000 years ago. This event created the 40-mile bowl that spans the Yellowstone park. This is not Earth’s only dormant supervolcano. Scientists guess that a supereruption occurs roughly every 100,000 years.

Geologists assumed that it would take hundreds of years for the next supervolcanic eruption—until now. The ASU researchers found in their analysis temperature changes and composition that have taken mere decades, instead of the expected centuries, and scientists are now realizing that the conditions that contribute to supereruptions could show within one lifetime.

These new findings further a 2011 study that found that the magma reservoir in Yellowstone had grown by 10 inches in seven years, which is very high, experts say. Major tourist attractions like the Old Faithful geyser and Grand Prismatic Spring are indications of that magma reservoir.

[goldenvalley]

No need to wait for volcanos or anything.  You can get crushed by rock slides. (Luckily no one was this time.) Snow melt dislodges boulders up in the Sierra.  See video if you like boulders, heavy equipment, and blasting of the boulders.  Echo Summit is on US Highway 50 in the Sierra near Lake Tahoe.  Shortly after you cross the summit going eastbound you see the lake.  It's gorgeous.


fox40.com/news/local-news/caltrans-rockslide-cleanup-resumes-near-echo-summit-one-lane-traffic-control-on-hwy-50/

[goldenvalley]

Egypt is holding the container ship that blocked the Suez Canal.  

In the latest complication to the ill-fated voyage, Egypt has seized the Ever Given over its owners’ “failure to pay an amount of $900 million,” the state-run news outlet Ahram Gate reported. That amount represents the total compensation that Egypt says it is owed for the six-day blockage of the Suez Canal, including lost revenue from ships that ordinarily would have traveled through the canal during that time, as well as costs for damage to the crucial waterway and the equipment and labor deployed in the 144-hour scramble to free the ship.

[Bact PhD]

Apr 13, 2021 15:27:35 GMT goldenvalley said:

Egypt is holding the container ship that blocked the Suez Canal.  

In the latest complication to the ill-fated voyage, Egypt has seized the Ever Given over its owners’ “failure to pay an amount of $900 million,” the state-run news outlet Ahram Gate reported. That amount represents the total compensation that Egypt says it is owed for the six-day blockage of the Suez Canal, including lost revenue from ships that ordinarily would have traveled through the canal during that time, as well as costs for damage to the crucial waterway and the equipment and labor deployed in the 144-hour scramble to free the ship.

OUCH!!! That's gonna hurt the bottom line!

[andydp]

Apr 13, 2021 15:29:16 GMT Bact PhD said:

Apr 13, 2021 15:27:35 GMT goldenvalley said:

Egypt is holding the container ship that blocked the Suez Canal.  

OUCH!!! That's gonna hurt the bottom line!

 I unserstand there is a Ketchup and Toilet Paper shortage looming.  My mind is still struggling to find the connection.

[LFC]

This is a real feel-good piece that restores a bit of your faith in people.

Officially, Jessie Hamilton was a cook at the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity house at Louisiana State University, but she was also a therapist, a cheerleader, and a friend.

Starting in 1982, Hamilton worked at the Phi Gamma Delta (also known as Fiji) house for 14 years. She made about 100 brothers delicious breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, but was also available to lend an ear, offering advice on everything from relationships to coursework.

"I was always there to talk things through with them," she told The Washington Post. "They'd come in the kitchen and sit on top of the counter and tell me their problems." Fiji brother Andrew Fusaiotti graduated in the late 1980s, but can still remember his talks with Hamilton. "She was truly like a mother to us," he told the Post. "She treated us like we were her own kids. She was always looking out for us."

A sharecropper's daughter, Hamilton started working at 14, and has had at least two jobs at a time ever since. She's kept in touch with several of the brothers, and they decided for her 74th birthday this month, they were going to give her the gift of retirement. Fusaiotti found out from Hamilton's children that she needed $45,000 to pay off her mortgage, so he started a fundraiser. More than 90 brothers from across the country donated a total of $51,764.

On April 3, a dozen vaccinated brothers surprised Hamilton outside of her Baton Rouge home, and after singing "Happy Birthday," they gave her two checks — one to pay off the mortgage, with the rest to spend on whatever Hamilton wants. "If I hadn't been sitting, I would have fell down," she told the Post. Hamilton has put in notice at her two jobs, and plans to spend part of her retirement visiting with the Fiji brothers. "They were my kids," she said. "They still are."

[Deleted]

Fantastic story - there are still good people in this world. You should have put up a warning about that video, though ...... my eyes are still leaking.

[LFC]

Apr 14, 2021 16:57:05 GMT @islander said:

Fantastic story - there are still good people in this world. You should have put up a warning about that video, though ...... my eyes are still leaking.

No leaking for me but I had a big shit-eatin' grin on my face through the whole read that wasn't going to budge. I wish the MSM would cover more stories like this and not just as the last 60 seconds or a tiny throwaway in print/display. These are the kinds of stories that inspire other people to good.

[goldenvalley]

Apr 14, 2021 17:31:15 GMT LFC said:

Apr 14, 2021 16:57:05 GMT @islander said:

Fantastic story - there are still good people in this world. You should have put up a warning about that video, though ...... my eyes are still leaking.

No leaking for me but I had a big shit-eatin' grin on my face through the whole read that wasn't going to budge. I wish the MSM would cover more stories like this and not just as the last 60 seconds or a tiny throwaway in print/display. These are the kinds of stories that inspire other people to good.

Hear! Hear!

And it's nice to see that fraternity brothers can grow up to be kind men who don't forget people that helped them along the way.

[LFC]

Apr 14, 2021 18:55:08 GMT goldenvalley said:

And it's nice to see that fraternity brothers can grow up to be kind men who don't forget people that helped them along the way.

Counterexamples: Matt Gaetz and Brett Kavanaugh who remained adolescent little shits.

[andydp]

This morning at about 0530 a truck transporting a crane managed to hit an overpass on probably the most heavily trafficked road in the area.  I 87 (The Northway) is the gateway to Canada and the Adirondacks. Its also the only major high speed/volume north south road in our area. The bridge will be out between three and five weeks.  No idea how many lanes will be open while this is going on.

I call your attention to the last photo showing the extent of the damage to one beam.  I'm no expert, but I can tell you to do the same amount of damage with C-4 would require about 10- 15 lbs of the stuff.  The kinetic energy required to actually tear an I beam is beyond my knowledge.

Here's the link.  The photo showing the torn I beam is the last one in the series.

wnyt.com/saratoga-county-ny-news/northway-crash-exits-9-and-8a-new-york-state-police-/6074698/?cat=10114&fbclid=IwAR12_bZ4Tw4OfQJJsF2UXJoDSUZGYgY1UKPRMh-xP_Rn3MaIGvehZCKkzEg

[Bact PhD]

An interesting pirate tale:

In 2014, a metal detectorist discovered a 17th-century Arabian coin in an orchard in Rhode Island. In the following years, other treasure hunters across New England uncovered even more Arabian coins from the same time period. But, according to the Associated Press, early European settlers weren't engaged in trade with merchants from the Arabic world, so how did they land in the colonies? New research conducted by amateur historian Jim Bailey connects these discoveries together in a new paper that attempts to fill in the details of this mystery and may help historians solve a long-lost pirate’s disappearance.

As William J. Kole reports for the AP, Bailey first found the 17th century coin—which was minted in Yemen in 1693—in a fruit grove two years after he had unearthed a number of other colonial-era coins. The newly discovered coins—which are among the oldest excavated in North America—could prove that the notorious pirate captain Henry Every set foot in New England after he seemingly disappeared in 1696. Bailey published his findings in a research journal of the American Numismatic Society.

[goldenvalley]

Lesson of the day:  always wear a life jacket when on the water.

Crews have suspended the search for a missing man, who is now presumed dead, after officials spotted a capsized kayak on Sunday and rescued his dog from Carter Lake in Colorado, according to officials.

The Larimer County Sheriff’s Office officials said on Friday that the search has been suspended after teams have spent more than 700 hours looking for the man believed to be from Loveland.

Rangers found an uninjured dog wearing a flotation device and a kayak in the lake Sunday afternoon but no kayaker.

[AnBr]

Oh wow!

[AnBr]

Making stone appear as a transparent veil is a skill at which 19th century Milan sculptor Giovanni Strazza had no peers.

[LFC]

A bit of perspective in Earth's timeline.