Man With Ax Destroys Musician's Drum Kit

 I’ve had neighbors yell or call the cops on me if our band was playing too loud but nothing this radical.

-Drifter

GIF's and Songs

 In honor of  GIF inventor, Stephen Wilhite who passed away last week, it's GIF and song night! Play a song to go along with your GIF. 

A big thank you to coup fighters aka Buzz for the great idea! 

Of course you can post a Gif or play a song separately. I know I'm not good at matching Gifs with songs...or maybe too lazy to think too hard about it. Lol  

The Return of the Dodo Bird?

 

The Dodo Bird was sometimes referred to as a 3 foot tall pigeon. Isolated on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean these flightless birds were first seen by Portuguese sailors about 1507 and were exterminated by humans and their introduced animals. The dodo was extinct by 1681. Below is a short article by Technology and Science Reporter James Harris about the possibility of bringing the Dodo being brought back to life. Enjoy!

-Drifter

THE DODO could be brought back to life hundreds of years after going extinct thanks to a DNA breakthrough.

Scientists have managed to sequence the entire genome of the flightless bird for the first time, meaning it could one day be cloned.

Experts could edit DNA from a pigeon to include dodo DNA, as the two have quite similar genetics.

3ft-tall Dodos once roamed Mauritius but were completely wiped out in the 17th century.

The possibility of their return was raised after Professor Beth Shapiro revealed that she was planning to share the complete DNA of a specimen soon, the Telegraph reports.

However, speaking during a Royal Society of Medicine webinar she warned that bringing back the extinct bird would not be easy.

 

'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

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