Tuesday, April 21, 2020

Equality or liberty

“A society that aims for equality before liberty will end up with neither equality nor liberty. And a society that aims first for liberty will not end up with equality but it will end up with a closer approach to equality than any other kind of system that has ever been developed. Now that conclusion is based both on evidence from history, across history and also I believe on reasoning which if try to follow through the implications of aiming first at equality will become clear, you can only aim at equality by giving some people the right to take things from others and what ultimately happens when aim at equality is that A and B decide what C shall do for D, except they take a little bit of commission off on the way.”- Milton Friedman

Monday, April 20, 2020

Pluto flyover

Thursday, April 16, 2020

Stunning Nile Shipwreck Is First Evidence Herodotus Wasn't Lying About Egyptian Boats

MICHELLE STARR

15 APRIL 2020
A sunken ship found in the Nile river may have lain undisturbed for over 2,500 years, but it is finally ponying up its secrets. Scientists think that this ship has revealed a structure whose existence has been debated for centuries.
In fragment 2.96 of Herodotus' Histories, published around 450 BCE, the Ancient Greek historian - who was writing about his trip to Egypt - describes a type of Nile cargo boat called a baris.
According to his portrayal, it was constructed like brickwork, lined with papyrus, and with a rudder that passed through a hole in the keel.
This steering system had been seen in representations and models through the Pharaonic period - but we had no firm archaeological evidence of its existence until now.
baris rudders reliefSimilar rudder systems, from the Deir el-Gebrâwi reliefs, c.2325-2155 BCE. (Davies, N. de G., 1901-1902)
Enter Ship 17, of the now-sunken port city Thonis-Heracleion near the Canopic Mouth of the Nile, dated to the Late Period, 664-332 BCE. Here, researchers have been exploring over 70 shipwrecks, discovering countless artefacts that reveal stunning details about the ancient trade hub and its culture.
Although it's been in the water for at least 2,000 years, the preservation of Ship 17 has been exceptional. Archaeologists were able to uncover 70 percent of the hull.
"It wasn't until we discovered this wreck that we realised Herodotus was right," archaeologist Damian Robinson of The Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology told The Guardian back in March 2019.
The ship displays several elements noted by Herodotus.
"The joints of the planking of Ship 17 are staggered in a way that gives it the appearance of 'courses of bricks', as described by Herodotus," wrote archaeologist Alexander Belov of the Centre for Egyptological Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences in a 2013 paper.
"The planking of Ship 17 is assembled transversally by remarkably long tenons that can reach 1.99 m in length and that pass through up to 11 strakes. These tenons correspond to the 'long and close-set stakes' in Herodotus' narrative… Herodotus also mentions the baris' keel, and Ship 17 has a keel that is twice as thick as the planking and projects inside the hull."
There are some inconsistencies - the vessel Herodotus describes had shorter tenons, which acted like ribs holding together the acacia planks of the hull; and Herodotus' baris didn't have reinforcing frames, where Ship 17 had several.
Both of these can be explained if Ship 17, around 27 metres long, is bigger than Herodotus' baris.
"Herodotus describes the boats as having long internal ribs. Nobody really knew what that meant… That structure's never been seen archaeologically before," Robinson said.
"Then we discovered this form of construction on this particular boat and it absolutely is what Herodotus has been saying."
baris steering(Belov, IJNA, 2013)
And, of course, there's that splendid rudder, which is threaded through two holes in the stern. Placed one in front of the other, these holes seem to have allowed for better steering depending whether the ship is loaded with cargo.
According to these detailed findings, researchers believe that Ship 17 is so close to Herodotus' description that it could have been built in the same shipyard.
Belov's exploration of the ship's construction has been published in a monograph by the Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology, Ship 17: a baris from Thonis-Heracleion.
A version of this article was first published in March 2019.

91

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Tuesday, April 14, 2020

Margaret Brennan - Fun Cleavage!


‘Face The Nation’ Host Promotes Bigotry



Sunday on “Face The Nation,” host Margaret Brennan repeatedly asked a question that many forward-thinking viewers will see as bigoted and sexist: “Does Donald Trump respect women?”
Now at first glance, I’m guessing a lot of people might think “What’s wrong with that?”
Well, that’s why I decided to write…
First of all, just to highlight the media’s growing infatuation with itself, it’s the typical kind of “Gotcha!” question that The Resistance Media dream up and then spend the next week patting themselves on the back for.
And it is typical. Just last week we saw ABC’s Jonathan Karl and CNN’s Anderson Cooper employ a similar line of questioning. On separate occasions, the two took turns asking Trump supporters to play “count the colors” with respect to the racial make-up of the Trump Administration. The questioning was — just like Brennan’s — lazy, regressive and bigoted. And in both cases, the folly of the questioning was missed by the right and celebrated by the left.
Brennan thought for sure that she’d be able to shame the women who support Trump and embolden the ones who oppose him. Unfortunately for Brennan, one of the women who supports President Trump was particularly blessed with the ability to effectively express her views. And she wasn’t going to be bullied in to Brennan’s corner.
You can watch the segment below, but I’m going to keep writing because even the effective Trump supporter missed the most important and potent answer to Brennan’s ridiculous question.
The correct answer should sound like this…
No. President Trump doesn’t respect women. And he doesn’t respect men. And he doesn’t respect white people. And he doesn’t respect black people. And he doesn’t respect Hispanics, Asians, gay people, straight people, Christians, Muslims or Jews. President Trump — like most of his supporters and I think and hope most Americans — respects individuals. And people who say they respect an entire class of people just because of their identity (race, ethnicity, gender, etc), aren’t much better than people who say they don’t respect people because of their identity. If you judge people based on identity, good or bad, then you’re a bigot. Because you judge people based on identity. And rather than try to celebrate that, Margaret, or plant those seeds in the minds of your millions of viewers, you should use your platform in more progressive ways that promote quality conversations and unity rather than social segregation and division.
That’s the right answer. Of course President Trump isn’t exactly on top of it either, when he says things like “Nobody loves the Hispanics more than Trump.” But I love it when he says that because I’m a partisan and I know it drives The Resistance Media (ie, the mainstream media) absolutely insane.
But I think more and more people on the right are waking up to what some of us have been preaching for years: Our nation was not long ago a very healthy body representing the wide-woke realization of Dr. King’s dream that we judge by character, rather than color/identity. But in the last few decades, the historically-consistent bigots in the Democrat party have — with the help of Hollywood, academia and the mainstream media — begun shackling people with manufactured grievance, and creating brand new division and hatred and segregation. And it’s time we start calling out people like Karl and Cooper for demanding that we all view the world through race-colored lenses, and others like Margaret Brennan for her own ridiculously regressive insistence that we view women as a monolith.
The same goes for questions like “What will President Trump do for women?”, or blacks, Hispanics, etc. Here’s the right answer for that…
The first thing President Trump will do for women, blacks, Hispanics and others, is tell Democrats and the media to stop treating them like their gender or skin color somehow means they need special treatment. That type of thinking is regressive and bigoted, and does more to create division than it does to inspire unity; more to corrupt Liberty than it does to celebrate individual freedom.
Again, that’s the right answer. And while I often pretend when writing pieces like this that many people are waking up to that reality, the truth is: I honestly haven’t heard anyone with a meaningful platform — in politics or conservative media — even come close to pushing that important evolution. But cream rises to the top, so someday soon they will.
And that’s a good thing.
Because Republicans have led every meaningful Civil Rights movement in our nation’s history against Democrats’ bigoted resistance, and the narrative shifts I describe above are without question the most important of our time in that ongoing battle.
Here’s the segment…


INTERESTING NOTE: I just went looking for the clip to include in this piece. What I found was very interesting. The “Face The Nation” Twitter account shared all the clips from this segment, except the one where the Trump supporter so effectively made the case for why she supports him. That clip, apparently, wasn’t worthy of being shared. So I grabbed it myself and uploaded it to YouTube.
NOTE ALSO: You can tell a lot about someone by the company they keep. Just like fascist hate-monger Chelsea Handler loves Jake Tapper (despite the fact that so many of Jake’s defenders claim he’s definitely impartial), it appears that Resistance General Stephen Colbert just loves Margaret Brennan. (Thus the featured image for this piece.) “Face The Nation” was, thanks to the end of The McLaughlin Group, the best of the worst in terms of the big 3 network Sunday shows. And it still is. But as I watched today I was compelled to call Brennan out for her question, because it’s time more people start call out the Left for their bigoted, identity-first worldviews.

Trump Trolls Media With Their Own Words at Press Briefing


Monday, April 6, 2020

Call The Midwife' Season 9 Episode 2

Sister Julienne: I failed a girl and I don’t think I can help her. She’s convinced she’s a bad mom, and has in fact been a bad mom, but she’s definitely going to have more kids.
Sister Monica Joan: What about the kids?
Sister Julienne: That’s what I’m worried about.
Sister Monica Joan: You know, when I first became a nun I found Lent the worst, because we didn’t have nature inside. But then I realized that the penance isn’t what God likes, it’s submission.
Sister Julienne: So I have to accept the world as it is?
Sister Monica Joan: I mean, yeah — you have to meet people where they are.

Sunday, April 5, 2020