Melting Ice Reveals a Viking Mountain Pass

Gizmodo slideshows the most intriguing archaeological discoveries of 2020. They missed the Amazonian rock paintings that proved that today’s rain forest jungle used to be savannah. And, I was much amused to read the comment on the slide above:

Mittens, shoes, horse snowshoes, bits of sleds, and the remains of a dog still attached to its collar were among the many items found in a former mountain pass in central Norway. Located on Lomseggen Ridge, the pass was used for over 1,000 years, with traffic peaking around 1000 CE during the Viking Age. A melting glacier—the result of climate change—made this and similar archaeological discoveries possible. Also, climate change still sucks.

If that pass was previously exposed a thousand years ago, and used for a thousand years, long before the Industrial Revolution and the Internal Combustion Engine, doesn’t that fact suggest that the climate can change without human responsibility and without any culpability?

Doesn’t that prove that very major changes of climate, on a scale like nothing we have remotely experienced, happen perfectly normally as part of the order of Nature?

A change of climate, like any change, must inevitably feature certain downsides, but if you lived in Central Norway, do you really think warmer, milder weather and freshly open, more convenient mountain passes useable for travel and trade would necessarily suck? That perspective strikes me as conformist, unthinking, and naive.

I know a lot of people lie about their age but this is ridiculoushttps://t.co/5qBeNXchHq

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) December 8, 2020

pic.twitter.com/reenwuelHY

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 8, 2020

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Daily Mail:

Trump tweets video of Chinese professor claiming that Beijing can swing US policy because it has ‘people at the top of America’s core inner circle of power’ in clip that has been deleted from social media in China

Di Dongsheng, a professor at Renmin University in Beijing, appeared on a Chinese television show about Wall Street and international trade last month.

The video was deleted from Chinese social media soon after being uploaded but copies were made which have since been circulating including YouTube.

Professor Di stated how China had ‘people at the top of America’s core inner circle of power and influence’ for years.

Di said the relationship was true for decades until President Trump came along.

He also notes how the Obama administration was easy to manipulate.

Di believes the old ties between China and the U.S. will be restored once President Biden is in the White House.

Excerpts of the video were tweeted by President Trump on Monday night after Tucker Carlson shared a clip on his show.

Brigadier General Charles Elwood Yaeger, WWII Ace and the pioneering test pilot who became the first man to break the sound barrier passed away in Los Angeles at the age of 97.

Yeager was chosen for the most dangerous and innovative test assignments because he was considered the best instinctive pilot the Air Force authorities had ever seen and because he had demonstrated an extraordinary capacity to remain calm and focused in stressful situations.

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On December 10, 1963, then Colonel Chuck Yeager flying a modified Lockheed F-104 Starfighter equipped with a liquid fuel rocket engine narrowly escaped death when his aircraft went out of control at 108,700 feet.

AP:

The Virginia Military Institute began work Monday to remove a prominent statue of Confederate Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, an effort initiated this fall after allegations of systemic racism roiled the school.

A crew was inspecting the statue at the public military college in Lexington, poised to haul away the figure of Jackson that some cadets were required to salute until several years ago. A small crowd gathered amid snow flurries to look on.

VMI’s board voted to remove the statue in late October after The Washington Post published a story that described an “atmosphere of hostility and cultural insensitivity” at VMI. …

VMI’s board voted to remove the statue in late October after The Washington Post published a story that described an “atmosphere of hostility and cultural insensitivity” at VMI. …

The Post’s story also led to the ouster of VMI’s superintendent, retired Army Gen. J.H. Binford Peay III, and prompted state officials to commit to hiring an outside firm to investigate the students’ allegations.

The statue had been a subject of controversy for years, but the school had committed to keeping it in place in front of VMI’s historic barracks as recently as July. VMI said it will be relocated to a nearby Civil War museum at a battlefield where dozens of VMI cadets were killed or wounded.

Amid a wave of Confederate monument removals around the country in the wake of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis, some VMI students and graduates called for the statue’s removal.

Peay said at the time that the school would change some of its longstanding traditions, such as relocating an oath ceremony from the Civil War battlefield. But he said it would not remove the statue of Jackson, who owned enslaved people, or rethink the names of buildings honoring Confederate leaders.

“Unlike many communities who are grappling with icons of the past, VMI has direct ties to many of the historical figures that are the subject of the current unrest. Stonewall Jackson was a professor at VMI, a West Point graduate who served in combat in the Mexican War, a military genius, a staunch Christian, and yes, a Confederate General,” Peay wrote in July. …

Since Peay’s departure, VMI announced Cedric Wins, a retired U.S. Army major general, will serve as its interim superintendent. Wins will be the first Black leader to serve in that role. The school’s board has also committed to other changes, including creating a permanent diversity office.

Wins said in a statement on Monday that “it is an understatement to say the relocation of the statue has evoked strong opinions on both sides of the issue.”

“The history of VMI over the past 181 years is well documented. Stonewall Jackson’s ties to Lexington and the Institute as an instructor are part of that history,” Wins said. But “VMI does not define itself by this statue and that is why this move is appropriate,” he added.

RTWT

The contemporary American establishment would rather define itself by its groveling to adolescent snowflakes with a headful of phony grievances. What an utter disgrace!

He’s acting, of course, as he enters, Winchester in hand, and begins crossing the river, but he really is an impressive figure and he actually does successfully convey the impression that he’s looking out for hostile Indians.

Watching him is like watching a myth take shape and come to life.

HT: Althouse.

St. Nicholas, bishop of Myra, d. 6 December 345 or 352

St. Nicholas was reportedly born in the city of Patara in Lycia in Asia Minor, heir to a wealthy family. He succeeded an uncle as bishop of Myra.

Nicholas left behind a legend of secret acts of benevolence and miracles (in Greek, he is spoken of as “Nikolaos o Thaumaturgos” — Nicholas the Wonder-Worker).

One of the saint’s prominent legends asserts that, in a time of famine, he foiled the crime of Fourth Century Sweeney Todd, an evil butcher who kidnapped and murdered three children, intending to market their remains as ham. St. Nicholas not only exposed the murder, but healed and resurrected the children intact.

Nicholas is also renowned for providing dowries for each of three daughters of an impoverished nobleman,who would otherwise have been unable to marry and who were about to be forced to prostitute themselves to live. In order to spare the sensibilities of the family, Nicholas is said to have secretly thrown a purse of gold coins into their window on each of three consecutive nights.

St. Nicholas’ covert acts of charity led to a custom of the giving of secret gifts concealed in shoes deliberately left out for their receipt on his feast day, and ultimately to the contemporary legend of Santa Claus leaving gifts in stockings on Christmas Eve.

St. Nicholas evolved into one of the most popular saints in the Church’s calendar, serving as patron of sailors, merchants, archers, thieves, prostitutes, pawnbrokers, children, and students, Greeks, Belgians, Frenchmen, Romanians, Bulgarians, Georgians, Albanians, Russians, Macedonians, Slovakians, Serbians, and Montenegrins, and all residents of Aberdeen, Amsterdam, Barranquilla, Campen, Corfu, Freiburg, Liverpool, Lorraine, Moscow, and New Amsterdam (New York).

His relics were stolen and removed to Bari to prevent capture by the Turks, and are alleged to exude a sweet-smelling oil down to the present day.

themaninthegreenshirt:

“The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants.”

–Albert Camus

Ayad Rahim thinks the democrats took no chances this time. They had it rigged.

In the last weeks of the presidential campaign, Donald Trump was drawing tens of thousands of enthusiastic supporters several times a day, and people across the land, and at sea, formed massive rallies and caravans of their own. Meanwhile, the Biden camp was barely limping along, with one or two funereal gatherings a week, before, at best, a few dozen people (sometimes, overwhelmingly outnumbered by Trump supporters); the campaign’s apparent strategy was to minimize the candidate’s exposure (and let the media do the work for them) — not only because the candidate was feeble and the campaign advocated lockdowns, but also because evidence began emerging of the Biden family’s dealings with foreign oligarchs and corrupt countries — most importantly, Communist China.

So, as election day approached, things were looking good for the president. Indeed, as the results came in on election night, the president was headed for re-election. He was ahead in the electoral college, and had big leads in the handful of remaining states he needed to win.

Then, suddenly, the counting stopped. Late at night, five decisive states announced at the same time that they stopped counting. Has the counting of votes ever stopped on election night in any election, let alone a presidential election? It’s as if, with a couple of minutes left to play in a basketball game, one team is way ahead and “running away with it,” and the other team is down and dejected, staring defeat in the face; and all of a sudden, the referees stop the game for the first time ever, and for no stated reason. Then they send the team that’s winning, home, blindfold them, and tie their hands; leave the trailing team on the court by itself, with control of the scoreboard and the keys; and ask them to send in the final score, whenever they want. If there were fans in the stands, they’d yell, “How much they payin’ you, ref?”

RTWT

He into a well in Italy 130,000 years ago, couldn’t get out, and starved to death. And he had buck teeth!

Daily Mail

Joe Biden is asked about his disagreements with Kamala Harris on certain issues:

"Like I told Barack, if I reach something where there's a fundamental disagreement we have based on a moral principle, I'll develop some disease and say I have to resign." pic.twitter.com/SLcvrwaPCA

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) December 4, 2020

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Politicians hate it when that happens.