Update On Stonehenge

 After posting this I'm going to finish my taxes for the year then I'll be back. Enjoy!

-Drifter

New study on how Stonehenge may have served as an ancient solar calendar

A new analysis has identified how the design of Stonehenge may have represented a calendar, helping people track a solar year of 365.25 days calibrated by the alignment of the solstices.

New finds about the stone circle’s history, along with an analysis of other ancient calendar systems, prompted Professor Timothy Darvill to take a fresh look at Stonehenge. His analysis, published in the journal Antiquity, concluded that the site was designed as a solar calendar.

“The clear solstitial alignment of Stonehenge has prompted people to suggest that the site included some kind of calendar since the antiquarian William Stukeley,” said Professor Darvill, from Bournemouth University, “Now, discoveries brought the issue into sharper focus and indicate the site was a calendar based on a tropical solar year of 365.25 days.”

Crucially, recent research had shown that Stonehenge’s sarsens were added during the same phase of construction around 2500 BC. They were sourced from the same area and subsequently remained in the same formation. This indicates they worked as a single unit.

As such, Professor Darvill analysed these stones, examining their numerology and comparing them to other known calendars from this period. He identified a solar calendar in their layout, suggesting they served as a physical representation of the year that helped the ancient inhabitants of Wiltshire keep track of the days, weeks, and months.

“The proposed calendar works in a very straightforward way. Each of the 30 stones in the sarsen circle represents a day within a month, itself divided into three weeks each of 10 days,” said Professor Darvill, noting that distinctive stones in the circle mark the start of each week.

Additionally, an intercalary month of five days and a leap day every four years were needed to match the solar year. “The intercalary month, probably dedicated to the deities of the site, is represented by the five Trilithons in the centre of the site,” said Professor Darvill, “The four Station Stones outside the Sarsen Circle provide markers to notch-up until a leap day.”

As such, the winter and summer solstices would be framed by the same pairs of stones every year. One of the trilithons also frames the winter solstice, indicating it may have been the new year. This solstitial alignment also helps calibrate the calendar – any errors in counting the days would be easily detectable as the sun would be in the wrong place on the solstices.

Such a calendar, with 10 day weeks and extra months, may seem unusual today. However, calendars like this were adopted by many cultures during this period

“Such a solar calendar was developed in the eastern Mediterranean in the centuries after 3000 BC and was adopted in Egypt as the Civil Calendar around 2700 and was widely used at the start of the Old Kingdom about 2600 BC,” said Professor Darvill. This raises the possibility that the calendar tracked by Stonehenge may stem from the influence of one of these other cultures. Nearby finds hint at such cultural connections – the nearby Amesbury archer, buried nearby around the same period, was born in the Alps and moved to Britain as a teenager.

Professor Darvill hopes future research might shed light on these possibilities. Ancient DNA and archaeological artefacts could reveal connections between these cultures. Nevertheless, the identification of a solar calendar at Stonehenge should transform how we see it.

“Finding a solar calendar represented in the architecture of Stonehenge opens up a whole new way of seeing the monument as a place for the living,” he said, “A place where the timing of ceremonies and festivals was connected to the very fabric of the universe and celestial movements in the heavens.”

BOURNEMOUTH UNIVERSITY

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Deregulate it -- Marijuana

 20220210 Shep as Author

Elected federal and local officials often cannot resist their totalitarian desires to enrich their feifdoms and to control how other people live their lives.  Nowhere is this more evident than marijuana regulation.  Sheriff Shannon Dicus of San Bernadino county provides a recent example.  He has teamed with federal law enforcement to literally rob armored cars.  

The authority for these quasi-legal robberies arises from Federal Civil Asset Forfeiture laws.  Money seized by a local sheriff or police department is transferred to the FBI, which collects a twenty percent haircut prior to returning the money to the local department.  This skirts California law which explicitly permits the legal sale of marijuana.  It is not an overstatement to say this is nothing more than sheriff deputies using the threat of lethal force to commit robberies.  San Bernadino County sheriff deputies have stopped armored vehicles carrying cash from the state-legal marijuana trade at least three times, seizing over a million dollars in total.  The activities of the Sheriff Department are illegal under California statutes.  An organized group of armed men is stealing money arising from a business activity the California legislature has explicitly said is legal.   In a sane world this money would be considered "dirty" and neither the officers nor their departments would be allowed to retain it. The work-around comes from the Federal Justice Department's "Equitable Sharing" program.  The money first goes to the feds, who then return eighty percent of it to the department as "clean" money.

Enough already.

The half-assed decriminalization of marijuana by many states is an embarrassing failure on multiple levels.  Politicians on the left when "legalizing" marijuana in their respective states could not resist the totalitarian urge to create Byzantine licensing schemes as well as other unnecessary regulation and taxation.  The net effect in every state I've reviewed is a regulatory regime so burdensome that it is roughly as big of a hassle to buy weed from your new state-sanctioned drug dealer as it was to buy it from your old illegal trafficker.  One commonly stated goal of legalization was to cut down on the violence and other criminal activity associated with drug trafficking.  If a states regulation of weed is so inefficient and so greedy for taxes that the price and hassle factor are about the same, we'll never be able to get on top of the problems tied to illicit trafficking.  The failure of representatives from those states to bring legislation to do away with federal marijuana laws merely created a legal environment for unscrupulous lawmen to legally hold up armored trucks for the benefit of their local department.

Models for marijuana legislation should have minimal regulation as a goal.  There is no reason for the sale of marijuana to be more tightly regulated than the sale of alcohol.  Let's dispense with the fiction of medical marijuana.  There are other drugs that handle any of the medicinal benefits attributed to marijuana.  Simply make weed a product available for adult use.  If a grown-up wants to buy it to get high, fine.  If a grown up wants to buy it to control nausea, to stimulate appetite, or to relieve pain, fine.  The state has no reason to be concerned with how the product is used as long as there is no harm from the product's use outside of the commonly known side effects of smoking or consuming marijuana, and so long as non-users are not being harmed.  Let the consumer take responsibility for his own use.

The only possible regulatory interest a government can have is to limit the use to adults and the same sorts of oversight that any other plant product receives.

Of course all federal marijuana laws should be repealed.  

Heavy taxation of the product either by the states or the federal government will only further the harm caused by illicit trafficking.  Marijuana should be taxed just as most other over the counter items are taxed in retail stores.

Let's elect people who understand that they are not there to rule, but to govern.

On background, I've never smoked pot.  I've sometimes said I'd try it if Willie Nelson offered me some, but I've never met Willie, and of course he has stopped using weed.  My interest here is based on the advancement of individual liberty.

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Dinner Time!

 This is a small family eating at the dinner table. I suppose it's also the breakfast and lunch table. When you were a kid, did your family eat at the table for any meals? For those who have kids now, same question.

And, what was your place at the table? Did everyone sit in the same place each time?

As a kid, mom and dad sat across from each other and us 5 kids had our same place every time.  It was a round table. 

Breakfast was not as orderly. There was no formal breakfast or lunch time. Each kid got their bowl of cereal before school. Dad usually had a Carnation breakfast shake before work. But we still sat at our same places. 

Only dad got the yummy chocolate shake, us kids never did. It was only for dad. No fair!! LOL