The official history of Earth has a new chapter – and we are in it.
Geologists have classified the last 4,200 years as being a distinct age in the story of our planet.
They are calling it the Meghalayan Age, the onset of which was marked by a mega-drought that crushed a number of civilisations worldwide.
The International Chronostratigraphic Chart, the famous diagram depicting the timeline for Earth’s history (seen on many classroom walls) will be updated.
He is regarded as one of England’s greatest writers, whose poems were praised as the nation’s favourites and whose books were lauded as classics of children’s literature.
But it appears that Rudyard Kipling has fallen out of favour with today’s generation of students, after it emerged that his “If†poem has been scrubbed off a building by university students who claim he was a “racistâ€.
Student leaders at Manchester University declared that Kipling “stands for the opposite of liberation, empowerment, and human rightsâ€.
The poem, which had been painted on the wall of the students’ union building by an artist, was removed by students on Tuesday, in a bid to “reclaim†history on behalf of those who have been “oppressed†by “the likes of Kiplingâ€.
In lieu of Kipling’s If, students used a black marker pen to write out the poem Still I Rise by Maya Angelou on the same stretch of wall.
today, as a team, we removed an imperialist’s work from the walls of our union and replaced them with words of the maya angelou – god knows black and brown voices have been written out of history enough, and it’s time we try to reverse that, at the very least in our union ✊🏽 pic.twitter.com/VT5N3zlfyN
— Fatima Abid (@fatimabidSU) July 16, 2018
Sara Khan, the liberation and access officer at Manchester’s students’ union (SU), blamed a “failure to consult students†during the renovation of the SU building for the Kipling poem being painted on the wall in the first place.
“We, as an exec team, believe that Kipling stands for the opposite of liberation, empowerment, and human rights – the things that we, as an SU, stand for,†Miss Khan said.
The Russia conspiracy theory hinges on the single creaky claim that the Democratic National Committee hacks were a Russian plot to elect Trump. The theory and all its illegitimate stepchildren, including Robert Mueller and his infinitely expanding corps of prosecutors, lives or dies by the DNC hacks.
Trying to elect Trump by releasing damaging insider information from the DNC never made any sense. The DNC was already a dysfunctional organization that was being run by the Clinton campaign. Undermining its leadership had little impact on the election, but a great deal on control of the DNC.
There has never been any evidence that the DNC hacks swung the election. The vast majority of people never even heard of them. Only a handful of political insiders and watchers, already deeply and unpersuadably committed to one side or another, could name the contents of a single email.
When you want to understand the motive of a crime, follow the money. See who benefited from it, not casually, but deeply and significantly enough to justify the effort and risk of undertaking it.
The hacks targeted Clinton allies and sought to undermine their influence within the Democrat Party.
Russiagate’s fervent conspiracy theorists spin an unlikely scenario in which Moscow had picked Trump early on, and then abandoned him in a crowded field against 16 candidates, while assuming that he would naturally triumph. Instead of leaking Jeb Bush’s campaign emails or Marco Rubio’s, they bided their time and waited to release Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s and John Podesta’s emails.
That’s not a plan to help Trump win. It is a plan to take over the DNC.
Let’s look at what the Russians were actually doing during the election. They had set up fake Facebook sites aimed at the left on issues ranging from Black Lives Matter to the pipeline protests. That is not the behavior of a foreign intelligence operation that wanted Trump to win and the left to lose. Instead the Russians appeared to have allied with the left to push the Democrats even further to the left.
Divers involved in the rescue of 12 Thai boys and their soccer coach from a flooded cave have revealed extraordinary details of the dangerous operation.
A team of more than 150 worked together to free the group from Tham Luang cave, a 6-mile limestone cave system, in an operation that scared even the most seasoned professionals.
New details of the rescue were revealed Monday night on Four Corners, an Australian television series, including how it was decided which of the 12 boys were rescued first.
“It’s one of the most difficult and dangerous and risky things I’ve ever done, not in terms of my own personal safety, but in terms of the people I was responsible for,†British cave diver Jason Mallinson told the reporter.
“I’ve never done anything as risky as that and I don’t think I ever will again. But it was the only option we had, and we took it.â€
Mallinson was a “recover diver†tasked with getting the children through some of the most dangerous flooded passageways, in water that was so murky there was sometimes no visibility.
“The probability of success was about as low as you can get,†U.S. Mission Commander Major Charles Hodges said.
“I was fully expecting that we would accept casualties. Maybe three, four, possibly five would die,†he added.
For the dangerous three-hour long journey, each of the children was sedated to stop them from panicking. The rescue was so dangerous the Australian Government negotiated immunity from Thai authorities for any Australians involved in the sedation of the children in case anything went wrong.
Expert cave divers Craig Challen and Richard “Harry†Harris have been hailed as Australian heroes for their pivotal roles in rescuing the Thai football team.
Harris in particular was described as a “linchpin†in the operation, helping to assess the children at different stages of the journey.
The journey was broken up into nine sections and expert British divers were responsible for bringing them through the most complicated spots, using guide lines to help them navigate the passageways.
“We’d submerge with the kid. And depending how the line laid, we’d either have them on the right-hand side or the left-hand side, either holding their back or holding their chest,†Mallinson said.
He describes the process as “mentally exhausting,†especially on the last day, when there was no visibility.
“I had to have the lad really close to me because if you didn’t, you were bashing his head against the rocks,†he said.
“If we bashed him against a rock too hard and it dislodged that mask and flooded his mask, he was a goner. So that’s why we had to be very slow and careful about not banging them against rocks.â€
Instead, Mallinson said he extended his head above the boy’s so that his head hit the rocks instead.
“The visibility was that bad, you couldn’t see the rock until you actually hit it,†he said.
Earlier divers had rehearsed the rescue in a local pool, practicing the maneuvers with volunteer children and assessing whether the risky operation was feasible.
“I was confident of getting myself out, I was confident of not losing control of the line, I was confident of getting the kid out [but] I wasn’t a 100 percent confident of getting him out alive,†Mallinson said.
At some points the children had their scuba gear taken off and were taken in stretchers across some areas. In other areas they were carried in harnesses across very steep caverns as walking across these muddy areas would have been dangerous.
Two divers were assigned to each child so that at least one was always holding on to the child.
Harris assessed the children at different stages of the operation to ensure they were OK to continue.
“Without him, we wouldn’t have been able to do what we did,†Mallinson said. “His bedside manner when he was there with the kids and that, talking to them, calming them down and stuff like that.
“So yeah, he was the, the linchpin of the operation.â€
While it’s been reported that Dr. Harris also decided which children came out first, fellow Aussie diver Callen said this wasn’t true. He said it was the decision of the boys, coach and Thai Navy SEALs who were with them. The group was told about the operation and they decided who came out first.
“Harry did not choose them, as it has been suggested. So, I think it was their bravest guys that came out first.â€
The same environmental conditions have unveiled dozens of concealed architectural apparitions in recent weeks, but when eyes were laid on this prehistoric, epic circle invisibly cradled within the Boyne Valley, the sacred truly met the profane. …
“When we saw this, we knew straight away, this had never been seen or recorded before.”
Prompted by the recent archaeological discoveries borne out of the British heatwave, Murphy – who runs the website Mythical Ireland – decided to fly his drone southwards of the prehistoric monument Newgrange, never actually dreaming he’d encounter an unknown site of the same ilk. Until he did.
Co-discoverer and fellow drone photographer Ken Williams at first couldn’t believe the pictures the drones were relaying, assuming the traced outline of buried prehistoric mounds was a strange artefact of drone interference, or perhaps crop circles stamped by pranksters.
“What we were looking at seemed too good to be true,” he wrote on his blog.
“We moved in closer to look at it in detail, [and] we could see for certain that this was the colouration of standing crops that had not been interfered with. What we were looking at was beneath, within the soil, not in the crops themselves.”
The circular pattern is approximately 150 metres (492 ft) in diameter, with an interior space stretching up to 120 metres (393 ft) in diameter.
Archaeologists estimate the structure and surrounding features of interest to be somewhere around 5,000 years old, with the henge circle capable of holding a few thousand people during ancient ritual events – although the exact purpose of such get togethers is still debated.
However, since the site is on private property, it’s unclear whether any future excavations will be conducted to allow archaeologists to investigate the structure in detail.
Nonetheless, these kinds of structures are so rare and so valuable to archaeologists and historians that even finding where such a mound lies is a significant scientific event.
“In all honesty, it’s going to take some time to process this,” Murphy explains on his blog.
“Archaeologists are calling it a once-in-a-lifetime find. The last time drought conditions like this might have allowed such features to be visible was in 1976.”
Already, preliminary aerial surveys carried out in the wake of the discovery have detected additional sites of interest near the henge, which will now be mapped.
New Frontier Auction, July 21, 2018, 3:00 PM MST, Loveland, CO,
Lot 249: Buffalo Bill Cody’s Colt 1860 Army
Estimate: $50,000 – $80,000
This Colt revolver comes with approximately 15 pages of documentation and provenance, and additional research done by noted expert R.L. Wilson. Lineage on this revolver attributes only four previous owners. Mr. Wilson wrote a definitive book on Buffalo Bill memorabilia of which this was an item of focus. The revolver is a standard Model 1860 Colt Army, shipped in 1868, with factory nickel finish. All legends are sharp. The rebated roll-engraved Naval cylinder scene is nearly 100%. Frame and barrel markings are sharp. It retains its original nipples. This is a full plated example, which includes hammer and trigger, and retains 80%-85% of its original bright nickel finish. All matching numbers, even including the wedge. The ivory grips show wonderful aged color, and are well-fitting. The backstrap is professionally engraved “TO W.F.C. THE SCOUT”. Wilson reiterates the propensity to nickel and ivory handguns by Buffalo Bill. He points out several nickel and ivory Colt 1860 Army models in the same Civil War Ledger book No. 3 with the same proximity of serial numbers. Mr. Wilson’s documented ownership lists collector James Aplan as purchasing this revolver in 1994 from Mr. David Molleck along with a Buffalo Bill trunk that came from Mr. S.R. Randolph, who owned a bar/ museum on Lookout Mountain, Colorado near the gravesite of Buffalo Bill. According to Randolph, these items were obtained from Johnny Baker, the adopted son of Buffalo Bill. The information comes with an old copy of photograph of S.R.Randolph at Lookout Mountain with trunk, letter from James Aplan, documented history, and a 1993 letter from S.R. Randolph stating he obtained said revolver from Johnny Baker, and is listed by serial number. Included also is an early photograph of Buffalo Bill in his scout attire with cohorts, showing nickel and ivory Colt Army in his belt. While numerous pictures exist of Buffalo Bill sporting a nickel Colt and its presentation to Cody, along with the wonderful all original condition and special order finish and ivory grips of the revolver, makes this a very historical and extremely early weapon belonging to the iconic William F. Cody.
Adriana Ivancich, Hemingway, and friend in Finca Vigia, Cuba.
The life of Ernest Hemingway remains sufficiently fascinating that a new book has appeared, Andrea Di Robilant’s Autumn in Venice: Ernest Hemingway and His Last Muse, chronicling the great man’s not-necessarily-ever-consummated infatuation at age 49 with an 18-year-old Italian countess.
That inappropriate relationship, ironically enough, provided the gravamen of Ernest Hemingway’s worst, only genuinely bad, downright embarrassing novel, Across the River and into the Trees.
Rafia Zakaria, a columnist for Pakistan’s largest newspaper (!), reviews the story of Hemingway’s Last Girl with chilly feminist scorn for the dirty old man’s incestuous infatuation with a younger woman he called “daughter,” and wrathfully concludes with a stern determination to call literary geniuses to account for their “sins” and their “misogyny” on behalf of the “maligned women” in their lives. Take that, Papa, you beast!
It all began because of a comb. Sometime after four in a dark and cold Italian morning, a young woman accompanied a band of men to a duck shoot. After it was over and the frigid hunters sat by the fire, the eighteen-year old Adriana Ivancich, the only woman in the gathering, asked for a comb for her long black hair. Nearly all the men in the party ignored her and kept up their talking. Ernest Hemingway, however, was not ever one to let a lady go unattended. After rooting around in his pockets, he produced a comb, broke it in half and gave it to her. It was a very Hemingway gesture, chivalrous and theatric and meant very much to be memorable. (63)
It would be. The Hemingway that was at the duck shoot that frigid morning may have been a rotund and aging man who presided over slightly slacking but still eminent literary career, but he remained ever amenable to the charms of women. The duck shoot was not even the first time the two had met; that had happened the night before, when Hemingway, along with Adriana’s cousin Nanuk Franchetti, the host of the duck shoot, had picked her up by the side of road. …
Autumn in Venice… is a chronicle of sorts of this last affair. Hemingway, then very much married to Mary Welsh Hemingway, who had ostensibly “stolen†him away from Martha Gellhorn, romanced Adriana right under his wife’s nose. The story of Adriana and Hemingway was initially interposed between Mary Hemingway’s “major shopping spreesâ€, “hours of sightseeing†and yet more shopping trips. It ended with Adriana and almost her entire family installed in the Hemingway’s home, fixtures at the caviar laden, booze filled evenings that oiled Hemingway’s daily grind.
In subject and content, the affair with Adriana, and indeed with Venice itself, was rather predictable and even banal. Hemingway had always craved the euphoria of being in love and had chased it all his life without concern for the cost it imposed on existing relationships and, as it were, his wives.
