'We can't endure this anymore': Miami Beach declares state of emergency over spring break violence.

 

South Carolina brings back firing squad as official execution method

 

Privilege-Checking in a World on Fire

 

The article below was written by David A. Eisenberg, an associate professor of political science at Eureka College

Posted by Drifter

Privilege is a sham mark of opprobrium—those who decry the privilege of others tend to want more of itfor themselves. The dissemblance is all the more distasteful given that the detractors of privilege typically possess, comparatively speaking, an abundance of it. One need not be conversant in history to realize as much. It is enough to simply survey the present. To deplore the unearned structural advantages maintained by white males at a time when Ukrainian cities fall and casualties rise reflects not only poor taste, but poor judgement. It bespeaks an insensitivity or obtuseness that today’s self-designated and self-righteous victims routinely ascribe to those the system is reputed to benefit.

No doubt there are beneficiaries. All societies are comprised of those who are advantaged and those who are not—an enduring reality of human existence, as the egregious inequalities that persisted in every society devoted to stamping them out attest. But to suggest that in America, privilege is parceled out neatly on the basis of skin color and chromosomal composition is ill-considered at best. It ought to suffice to allude to Appalachian whites, Indian Americans, and a growing gender gap favoring women in higher education to give the lie to the duplicitous platitudes that masquerade as incontrovertible truths in the present day.

But it is when one turns one’s gaze from America to the so-called global community that the narrow-mindedness of those who obsess about privilege becomes most glaring. Anyone with the luxury to fret about microaggressions in a world riven by macroaggressions is privileged. Anyone with the liberty to assign himself idiosyncratic pronouns, oblige others to adopt them, and punish those who do not comply knows a good deal of privilege. Everyone who has never had his city shelled; never been forcibly displaced from his home; never had to take up arms to defend his life against an invading army is, as current events make plain, tremendously privileged.

It is an especially blinkered and self-absorbed individual who fails to appreciate as much; the sort of person who petulantly demands that his views not only be heard but validated. (Another privilege retained by those who stridently lament their lack of it: the license to expunge from history those deemed to be on the wrong side of it. The power to rewrite the past and the rules of grammar with it! Have underprivileged people with so much privilege ever before roamed the earth?) That education in America is bent on breeding such minds—minds ill-equipped to contemplate the human condition and comprehend the complexities (moral, political, material, etc.) that attend life in every era—must be ranked one of its greatest failings. If only minds so ill-prepared to judge were not so quick to do so. Alas…

To be fair, the widespread myopia that afflicts so many today appears to be congenital and what is worse, degenerative—a condition endemic to an age of universal haste and distraction. The declining attention span of the digital denizen ought to dispel the conceit that human sapience accrues generationally. To make matters worse, it is not just that attention spans are in decline, but that what people devote their limited attention to is subject to shameless manipulation. At a time when individuals—the ostensibly underprivileged not least among them—incessantly boast about their agency and autonomy and intentionality, it is painfully obvious that what preoccupies them is not self-determined.

Following two years of around-the-clock coverage of COVID, during which time people were impelled to agonize about the virus, the news suddenly stopped. Or rather, it shifted focus. And in lockstep, the American people shifted theirs too. Obsession with COVID has given way to obsession with Ukraine. The transition was made so seamlessly and with such celerity that one wonders what the talking heads would be droning on about had Putin decided not to launch an invasion. Whatever might have been pronounced newsworthy, there can be no doubt that the ongoing hostilities and resulting humanitarian crises in Myanmar, Yemen, Syria, Sudan, Ethiopia, Mali, the Central African Republic, Burkina Faso (where?), or any of the scores of other war-torn and neglected corners of the globe would remain news-unworthy.

Of course, the geopolitical consequences of the conflict in Ukraine are disproportionately portentous, but the fact remains that before a laser pointer was shone on Ukraine, most Americans would have been hard-pressed to locate it on a map. This is not to suggest that one should be unmoved by the plight of the Ukrainian people; only that from a humanitarian perspective, one should be no less concerned about the plight of Myanmarese, Yemeni, Syrian, and Central African people. (Indeed, given the preponderately pale complexions of the Ukrainian people, they—per the scales of social justice—deserve less consideration and compassion. Unlike Lady Justice, social justice is not blind, and emphatically not colorblind.) Furthermore, their plights should highlight the privilege of those who do not share them. If you find yourself safely removed from a conflict zone, so safely that there is no credible prospect of suddenly finding yourself in one, you’ve got privilege and you might want to check yours (whatever that means) before you castigate others for theirs.

Of course, to (re)draw attention to the vacuity of contemporary privilege-talk, the unearned privilege that comes with being born in America amounts to much more than finding yourself far and safely removed from the many theaters of war that riddle the world at every moment. In terms of wealth, comfort, and freedom, Americans enjoy privileges the vast majority of people the world over will never know. Whatever their gender or race may be, Americans are, in an impolitic manner of speaking, the white males of the global village.

Such gross generalizations are intended less to offend than to encourage those who make commensurately gross generalizations (about whites in America, for instance) to reexamine their rhetoric. It is not just that this contemporary fixation with privilege is hollow; it is pernicious. Privilege, however one wishes to characterize it, does not immunize those who possess it from misfortune. When pricked, they too bleed. The regressive tendency to categorize people on the basis of their skin color, class, gender, sexual orientation, and so forth, and then to intersectionally assess their merit, is dehumanizing. It forestalls sympathy, fosters resentment, and promotes an endless cycle of recrimination that precludes reconciliation and incites people to tear one another apart.

For much of history, the ability to see the humanity of others—of those removed from and foreign to oneself—was uncommon; a capacity reserved for elevated and enlightened souls sparsely dispersed across the ages. As the distance between man and man has diminished over time, that capacity has become more and more accessible; a virtue no longer reserved for saints and sages, but within the reach of everyone. It is a precious gift—a privilege, one dare say—one that ironically is in jeopardy of being squandered by those who prattle unceasingly about privilege and in so doing, cannot see past the privileges of others nor apprehend their own.

Escaped Camel Kills 2 Men in Tennessee

 

Posted by Drifter

OBION, Tenn. -- Two people were killed Thursday afternoon after a camel escaped its enclosure on a Tennessee farm and attacked.

Officials said police responded to a call about a loose camel that was attacking people at Shirley Farms in Obion, a rural town in the northwestern corner of the state.

Responding officers began rendering aid to two unconscious men at the farm when the camel "attacked" a police vehicle, according to an Obion County Sheriff's Office statement.

The animal "then [moved] towards deputies who were attempting to move a victim to EMS" and "it was at this time officers had to put the camel down for the safety of everyone on scene."

The victims, identified as 42-year-old Bobby Matheny and 67-year-old Tommy Gunn, were pronounced dead at the scene.

It is unclear how the camel managed to escape its enclosure, what provoked the attacks and what type of injuries the men sustained.

In 2018, six children and one adult were injured when a camel ended up getting loose and running wild at a circus in Pittsburgh. And in 2015, two people were trampled to death when a man snuck into a camel's holding pen on a Texas farm.

 

Box of human heads stolen from truck in Denver

 

DENVER — Police in Denver are investigating the theft of a box of human heads from a parked truck in the city last week.

The heads were marked for medical research and were inside a box labeled ”Exempt Human Specimen,” according to the Denver Police Department.

The truck was parked in the 7700 Block of East 23rd Avenue when the thief broke into the freight company’s truck sometime between 2:30 p.m. Wednesday and 9:30 a.m. Thursday and left with the box of human remains and a dolly, police said.

It’s unclear if the suspect was aware of what was inside of the box.

No arrests have been made and investigators are working to gather more information to identify the suspect and recover the stolen items, police said in a news release.

Police are encouraging anyone who may come upon the box to call the department at 720-913-2000 

Posted by Drifter

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

Canada's Justin Trudeau invokes emergency powers in bid to end protests

New Zealand plays Barry Manilow to repel parliament protesters

 

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.

"Offense to beep your horn" Ottawa Police Jones Arrests Old Man

THOT's Gangbanger's Ball

Muh new intro. Going way back. Mood. If you don't turn that up. You'll never live it down. -THOT. and Hangry Kittie......LOL. xoxox.