A rare sight greeted archaeologists excavating a gravesite in the southern Bavarian town of Nördlingen last week: Nestled near the grave’s occupants was a 3,000-year-old sword.
The weapon barely shows its age. It has remained so well-preserved that it “almost still shines,” says Bavaria’s State Office for Monument Protection in a statement, per Google Translate.
The weapon sports an octagonal bronze hilt that was cast over the blade, which few smiths were skilled enough to make at the time, according to Live Science’s Laura Geggel. Only two manufacturing regions were known to have made swords of this kind: one near the excavation site in southern Germany, and the other in northern Germany and Denmark.
The octagonal hilt was cast directly over the blade of the sword, something only certain smiths were skilled enough to do. Archäologie-Büro Dr. Woidich / Sergiu Tifui
The sword shows no wear and tear indicating use in battle, but archaeologists say “its center of gravity made it suitable for use as a real weapon, and it was capable of being used to slash opponents,” reports Newsweek’s Jess Thomson.
Bronze swords first emerged around 1600 B.C.E. and were used until roughly 600 C.E., as Smithsonian magazine’s Alex Fox wrote in 2020. Researchers say that the Bavarian artifact dates to the end of the 14th century B.C.E.
The archaeologists say that swords like this one are quite rare, particularly because “many middle Bronze Age graves were looted over the millennia,” per Live Science.
Caesar Trajanus Hadrianus (24 January 76 A.D.– 10 July 138 A/D.).
According to the Historia Augusta, the Emperor Hadrian composed the following poem, speaking for all of us, in his last days, while dying of heart failure.
Animula vagula blandula
Hospes comesque corporis
Quae nunc abibis in loca?
Pallidula rigida nudula
Nec ut soles dabis iocos
Poor little, wandering, charming soul
Guest and companion of my body,
To what place will you go now?
Pale, stiff, naked little thing,
Nor then will you make jokes as usual.
Face it, America: you’re just too stupid to listen to Jordan Peterson and RFK Jr. talking about COVID vaccines. Your elite Corporate Overlords, the snot-nosed millennials with the piercings, tattoos, and the gender uncertainty, recently fresh out of college, recognize the need for themselves to do the big thinking for you. It simply wouldn’t be right for both sides of the argument to come your way, you might be confused and come down on he wrong side, poor hapless schmucks that you are. That’s why they’re working on those self-driving cars for you!
In the old America, now gone, businessmen (like Sinclair Lewis’s famous character) were timid and cautious about taking public positions on political matters or pubic controversies, recognizing that some of their customers would inevitably occupy positions on both sides of any such divide. They were afraid to come out on one side or the other for fear of losing half their business.
But today, there are all these natural electronic monopolies, Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and PayPal, and there are these gigantic legacy corporate entities, like Disney and Target and Anheuser-Busch and the Los Angeles Dodgers. If good old George Babbitt came out for Prohibition, for instance, the loose-livers and hard drinkers could, and would, just go right down the road to some other realtor. Today’s big businesses have gotten out of the habit of worrying about staying on their customers’ good sides. On the contrary, they feel entitled to tell you what to think.
YouTube said Monday that it had removed a video of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaking with podcast host Jordan Peterson for spreading what the company said was vaccine misinformation. …
YouTube’s policies against hosting false medical information are long-standing.
“We removed a video from the Jordan Peterson channel for violating YouTube’s general vaccine misinformation policy, which prohibits content that alleges that vaccines cause chronic side effects, outside of rare side effects that are recognized by health authorities,” YouTube said Monday in a statement.
The CEO of OceanGate, which is operating the missing Titanic tourist submarine, explains that the company didn’t want to hire any experienced “50 year old white guys” because they weren’t “inspirational.” pic.twitter.com/kxXkhBn7oL
Speaking technically, if the Colt letter in the lower photo pertains to this revolver, it is a “Frontier Sixshooter” chambered in .44 WCF (Winchester Centerfire) also known as .44-40 Winchester. This revolver would, if that were the case, take the same round as its owner’s Winchester Model 1873 (or Model 1892), making it convenient to need only to carry one type of cartridge for both rifle and pistol. The serial number indicates it was made in 1898.
In the Northern Virginia Horse Country, west of the cesspool of Big Government and the hellish suburbs full of liberals, the scenic country roads, all little two-lane farm roads offering few opportunities to pass, on every weekend and holiday outside the winter, will be choked with intensely annoying hordes of spandex-clad idiots with insectoid helmets peddling along on their stupid bicycles blocking traffic.
You have only to look at them, to perceive their hideous bad taste, to grasp that they are all trendy, narcissistic vegans, with a strong representation of inverts, who vote democrat. Clogging other people’s roads, forcing the locals to crawl frustratedly behind their lengthy parades of bent-over grotesquerie, they positively exude entitlement and self-gratulation as they misuse roads other people built and maintain and drink in the scenery that was home turf to Turner Ashby and John Singleton Mosby, to Confederate cavalrymen and to fox hunters, to precisely the kind of people they hate and despise.
When the mass migration of all the worst elements of modernity hits the little village shop in Orleans, they clean out the soft drinks cooler case and buy up all the prepared sandwiches, to the absolute fury of the farm workers who arrive at lunch-time finding nothing left for themselves.
Just as those who tolerate or encourage racist, sexist and homophobic or transphobic comments on social media contribute to emboldening the people who attack and menace particular groups, people who parrot stereotypical comments about cyclists on social media subtly encourage those who would harm them — tearing down a memorial, close-passing a mother with a child on her bike or aggressively edging their car into a bike lane to menace and squeeze a bicyclist.
It was not until several years ago, when in my 70s I took up an electric bike as my primary form of transportation, that I began to realize how pervasive the hatred of bicyclists is among car drivers. At first, I thought it must be my inexperience that explained drivers cutting me off by turning directly into my path, honking impatiently and close-swerving around me when I slowed or moved out into the lane due to an obstacle ahead of me. They couldn’t know (or didn’t care) that I was being extra cautious to avoid being “doored” by someone parked alongside the bike lane in which I was riding. As I rode more, I saw drivers regularly do these things to other bicyclists, including everyone from kids to expert riders like Boyes.
The next time you are tempted to pile on to such a discussion about bicyclists, ask yourself if you are doing so because you consciously or unconsciously resent them — for taking up space on the roads, for slowing you down in your car, for seemingly being so free while you are stuck in car traffic. And if so, stop and ask yourself if you can re-envision them in a non-stereotyped way: as your own kids, grandmothers, parents or other people who are placed at risk by negative comments. Your words have the power to reinforce hurtful stereotypes or to reshape perceptions.
Ultimately, hate of bicyclists comes from the same place as racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia: a desire to cling to the status quo power arrangements that favor some over others. As the bicycle becomes re-popularized as a legitimate form of transportation, there are inevitably more conflicts with those who continually and mindlessly assert that “streets are for cars.” But just as gay people are no longer willing to stay in the closet, nor women in the kitchen, bicyclists are no longer willing to settle for crumbs in terms of use of our public roadways.
We do loathe and despise you for exactly same kind of abusive and insolent self-entitlement and eagerness to claim a special privileged status that allows you to run roughshod over the normal rest of the world that is merely going about its business that characterizes all the whining minorities, the proudly perverted, and the mentally-disordered impersonators of genders not their own. Sod the lot of you!
From Njáls saga: Gunnar fights his ambushers at Rangá.
Scott Alexander, it seems to me, misses the poetry and the sense of awe one ought to feel simply from coming into contact with this remote far more heroic age so distantly removed in the mists of Time from ourselves, but his review of the Saga of Burnt Njal is nonetheless witty and analytically intelligent.
There are only about 40,000 people in medieval Iceland. The book focuses on the Southwest Quarter, so let’s say 10,000 there. Each of our characters is a large landowning farmer with many children, servants, tenants, etc; if he is patriarch of a 20 person household, then there must be about 500 such patriarchs. Each of these 500 relevant Icelanders is profiled in loving depth. And if there are 500 characters in Njal’s Saga, and n people can have n(n-1)/2 possible two-person feuds, that’s 124,750 possible feuds. Of these, about 124,749 actually take place over the course of the saga (Njal and his friend Gunnar are best buds, and refuse to feud for any reason).
A typical feud goes like this:
Someone with a name like Hrapp the Ugly, who is ill-famed throughout the land, becomes jealous of his betters. Maybe one particular better irks him, someone with a name like Eirik The Beloved-By-All.
Hrapp insinuates himself with you, flattering you until you believe he is your best friend. Then, once you trust him completely, he says “Eirik The Beloved-By-All is saying behind your back that you’re weak and effeminate; also maybe he’s plotting to kill you.”
You gather your kinsmen and say “Eirik The Beloved-By-All is slandering and plotting against me, we need to stop him.” Your friends and kinsmen object “Eirik is the kindest of all men! Surely this is only the poison of Hrapp the Ugly, whispering lies into your ear.”
You say “I have sworn to do this thing, and I call upon you as my kin to support me. If you do not, let it be known to all that you refused to help a kinsman in his time of need!”
Your kinsmen grudgingly agree to help you. You all form a raiding party and catch Eirik The Beloved-By-All when he is out hunting with his family. He kills three of your kin, but you kill five of his; he himself escapes.
You and your kin ride to all the neighboring houses, saying “We have slain five kinsmen of Eirik The-Beloved-By-All! Stand witness to our slaying!” This part is non-negotiable. If you don’t announce your killings to the victims’ neighbors immediately, the lawyers will destroy you in court later on.
Months pass. You and your kin go to the Althing. Eirik and his kin are there too, and announce that they are suing you.
You go around to all the leading men at the Althing, asking them to “support” you. The exact implications of “support” are vague, but it seems to involve standing around menacingly holding their axes while the trial is happening, in case the other side tries anything funny.
Eirik offers to drop the suit for a weregild of 300 silver pieces per person. But you refuse to pay more than 100 silver pieces. The trial is on!
You realize you will need a good lawyer. You call in a favor from your wife’s cousin’s husband’s uncle, an old man with a name like Hurgolf The Wise. He agrees to serve as your lawyer. He asks whether you complied with about a dozen insane technicalities, starting with “You did remember to tell your victims’ neighbors that you killed them, right?” and moving on to obscure details of the exact wording you used when presenting the suit. If you got any of these wrong, you will at best lose the suit and at worst be condemned to death.
Hurgolf the Wise and the other side’s lawyer fight it out at the Althing! This trial is almost never a whodunit – you, not being a monster, reported the slaying to the victim’s neighbors immediately. More often, you accuse the other side of not observing all the insane technicalities. You and Eirik almost come to blows in the courthouse. Both lawyers suggest there’s a possibility that either or both sides could be condemned to death for failing to observe the technicalities. Sometimes the lawyers get condemned to death for failing to observe technicalities.
Finally Njal (it is always Njal) offers to arbitrate. You agree. You trust Njal. Everyone trusts Njal. He is the wisest of men, and the greatest lawyer in Iceland.
Njal considers the facts of the case. He decides on a weregild of 200 silver pieces per person. You killed five of Eirik’s kin, but he killed three of your kin, so on net you killed two of Eirik’s kin, so you owe him 400 silver pieces. But he will add an extra 100 because of one of the people you killed was an especially good guy – but then take away seventy-five because one time Eirik’s cousin’s son punched your wife’s brother. So you owe a total of 425 silver pieces.
You pay Eirik’s kin 425 silver pieces. You embrace Eirik, and declare that you are now the closest of friends, and will defend him to the death from then on. He says the same, and gives you rich gifts, and invites you to stay at his farm the next time you’re in his part of southwest Iceland. Possibly he is so swept up in the excitement of mutual reconciliation that he waives the 425 silver piece fee entirely. You declare him the best and most munificent of men.
All of Eirik’s kin join in this display except Eirik’s young niece, who seethes with humiliation. She tells her husband, Ragnar Of The Bloody Axe, that he must kill you, or else she will never sleep with him again.
Ragnar Of The Bloody Axe gathers some of his kin and goes to kill you, but ends up killing five of your kin instead.
Repeat Steps 6-13. Njal offers to arbitrate, and Eirik pays you the weregilds this time. You embrace Eirik, saying you knew all along he was an honorable and noble person and this latest weregild only further proves his excellent nature. You consider offering his son your daughter’s hand in marriage, or vice versa.
Repeat until everyone in both your families is dead.
If you want to read about various Icelanders going through this process 124,749 times, Njal’s Saga is the book for you.
Well, one month ago, I predicted that the Manhattan DA’s Office would read the statute to the Grand Jury thereby deliberately throwing the case, and that the charges against Daniel Penny would be dismissed.
Silly me! I had based my prediction on my own experiences with the same DA’s Office forty years ago this year. Once again, I find that America has changed dramatically in the course of my lifetime and, as always, for the worse.
Back in the 1980s, then as now, NYC was a corrupt democrat party machine-run one-party state. The democrats were liberals then, but they were cynical, corrupt, pragmatic liberals. Today’s democrat party sometime ago surrendered power to commie crazies like Bill de Blasio and professional race-baiters like Alvin Bragg.
The 1980s DA’s Office backed off and threw the case against me by informing the Grand Jury what the law actually says partly, I expect, because it was the right thing to do, but probably more significantly because it had been made clear to them that prosecuting me would bring down on their heads huge amounts of controversy and public criticism.
The 1980s guys were primarily pragmatists. Alvin Bragg is an ideologue whose career is built upon whipping up the emotions of his homies over all sorts of imaginary grievances. He can no more pass up the opportunity to depict that deceased deranged black criminal as a martyred victim than a rat can pass by a piece of cheese sitting on the trigger of a trap.
It is no fun, I can tell you, living with a possible upcoming criminal trial and facing big time legal costs for a defense, while contemplating (even a minority possibility of) conviction and imprisonment.
Happily, Daniel Penny’s Legal Defense Fund on GiveSendGo has, as of right now, amassed $2,883,009, and the law really is on his side. If he really goes to trial, the statute will for sure be read to that jury.
SECTION 35.30
Justification; use of physical force in making an arrest or in preventing an escape
4. A private person acting on his or her own account may use physical
force, other than deadly physical force, upon another person when and to
the extent that he or she reasonably believes such to be necessary to
effect an arrest or to prevent the escape from custody of a person whom
he or she reasonably believes to have committed an offense and who in
fact has committed such offense; and may use deadly physical force for
such purpose when he or she reasonably believes such to be necessary to:
(a) Defend himself, herself or a third person from what he or she
reasonably believes to be the use or imminent use of deadly physical
force. …
The “Out of Africa” hypothesis of human origins has had going for, first of all, the comparatively large quantity of hominid fossils found on that continent, but it was also particularly acceptable politically providing huge support for the essential identity of all human races and for giving the poor long-looked-down-upon Dark Continent a new, special dignity as the Motherland of us all.
But, maybe not, too. An international team of scholars led by a Paleoanthropologist from the University of Toronto have issued a new paper, speaking heresy.
Humans and chimpanzees split from their last common ancestor several hundred thousand years earlier than believed – and this occurred in Europe, not Africa – according to an international team of scientists.
University of Toronto’s David Begun, a paleoanthropologist in the Faculty of Arts & Science, is a co-author of one of two controversial studies reported today on the pre-human remains in PLOS ONE.
“Our discovery outlines a new scenario for the beginning of human history – the findings allow us to move the human-chimpanzee split into the Mediterranean area,” Begun said. “These research findings call into question one of the most dogmatic assertions in paleoanthropology since Charles Darwin, which is that the human lineage originated in Africa.
“It is not a matter of continental bragging rights. It is critical to know where the human lineage arose so that we can reconstruct the circumstances leading to our divergence from the common ancestor we share with chimpanzees. Not having this information is like having a crime without the crime scene.”
Researchers analyzed two known fossil specimens of Graecopithecus freybergi using state-of-the-art methods – a lower jaw from Greece and an upper premolar from Bulgaria – and came to the conclusion that they belong to pre-humans. Furthermore, Graecopithecus is several hundred thousand years older than the oldest potential pre-human from Africa, the six to seven-million-year-old Sahelanthropus from Chad.
Using computer tomography, they visualized the internal structures of the Graecopithecus fossils and demonstrated that the roots of premolars are widely fused. The lower jaw, nicknamed El Graeco by the scientists, has additional dental root features, suggesting that the species Graecopithecus freybergi might belong to the pre-human lineage.
“While great apes typically have two or three separate and diverging roots, the roots of Graecopithecus converge and are partially fused – a feature that is characteristic of modern humans, early humans and several pre-humans including Ardipithecus and Australopithecus,” said Madelaine Böhme from the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen, who co-led the investigations with Nikolai Spassov from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
I am sure that if one could look deep into the minds of those who are on the Left in politics (including myself), Liberals, revolutionaries, socialists, communists, pacifists, and humanitarians, one woild find that their political beliefs and desires were connected with some strange goings on down among their ids in the unconscious.
