From The Graves of Children

Unearthed from the graves of children, ceramic baby bottles from thousands of years ago would look perfectly at home in nurseries today. Some have little feet, and one bottle’s spout juts from a ceramic critter’s bottom like a tail. These itty-bitty Bronze and Iron Age vessels smack of whimsy. But they, like many other everyday items used for feeding and food preparation, are providing scientists an unprecedented taste of how people ate long ago.

An examination of fatty molecules called lipids, for example, tucked into the pores of three ceramic bottles from Bavaria suggests that mothers living between 1200 BCE and 450 BCE were weaning or supplementing their kids’ diets with animal milk, Julie Dunne and her colleagues reported in 2019.

Dunne, a biomolecular archaeologist at the University of Bristol in England, speculates that the bottles’ creators may have been inspired to amuse their children. “They make us laugh today,” she says. More importantly, studying them “gives you such a close connection to the past.”

There aren’t many ways to study the feeding of infants in ancient times, Dunne says. Ancient bones have yielded insights about when infants were weaned, but “we know very little about how mothers brought up their babies.” The same is true of the eating lives of the ancients in general — much of the evidence has been indirect.  READ MORE

Enjoy the Vids

 

Hiding Hermit King

A British cave dwelling has been identified as the refuge for an exiled Anglo-Saxon king, according to archaeologists.

Anchor Church Caves, located by the River Trent in a secluded part of the countryside in central England, was long considered to be an 18th-century "folly" — an extravagant building made solely for ornamentation or as a joke.

But a new study has revealed that the cave house is the real deal. The 1,200-year-old structure was built during the tumultuous life of the Northumbrian king Eardwulf, who was hounded from his throne to live as a hermit, and later became a saint.  

Local legend said Eardwulf, or St. Hardulph as he was later known, lived inside the cave dwelling after he was deposed and exiled for mysterious reasons in A.D. 806. A fragment from a 16th-century book states that Eardwulf ''has a cell in a cliff a little from the Trent,'' and the banished king was buried in A.D. 830 at a location just 5 miles (8 kilometers) from the cave.  READ MORE

Cool Shape

 

Scars

 

Truth & Honesty

OOPS

More Vids

 

HDTV Antenna

By February 2009, nearly all U.S. television stations had transitioned from analog over-the-air transmissions to digital signals; today, the only way to receive these HDTV signals is by using a digital antenna. Here's how to choose and use the best antenna(s) for HDTV.

You would think you could drive down to your local WalMart, purchase any digital antenna and start watching free HDTV. Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple.

There are a number of OTA antennas available, and the one you choose depends on how far you live from the transmission towers, what direction the towers are from your location, and which channels you're hoping to receive.

The best starting point is to create an OTA antenna map for the channels you're hoping to receive with your new antenna.

To do this, head over to the FCC's website and type in your ZIP or click Go To My Location.

CLICK HERE TO FIND THE BEST HDTV ANTENNA FOR YOUR AREA BASED UPON ZIP CODE...

Rain

 

New Dune Trailer

Eight long months ago, we got out first glimpse of Denis Villeneuve's "Dune" and now we have a second, more longer look ... and it looks every bit like the epic space opera we've been hoping for.

It begins very much from the perspective of Chani, played by Zendaya.

"My planet Arrakis is so beautiful when the sun is low, rolling over the sands, you can see the spice in the air," she says in a new trailer revealed today (July 22). "The outsiders ravage our lands in front of our eyes. Their cruelty to my people is all I've known. What's to become of our world?"

We get good looks at most of the main characters, including, Timothée Chalamet (as Paul Atreides), Charlotte Rampling (Reverend Mother Gaius Mohiam), Josh Brolin (Gurney Halleck), Jason Momoa (Duncan Idaho), Rebecca Ferguson (Lady Jessica) and Oscar Isaac (Duke Leto Atreides), plus fleeting glimpses of Javier Bardem (Stilgar), Dave Bautista (Glossu 'Beast' Rabban) and Stellan Skarsgård (Baron Vladimir Harkonnen).  READ MORE

Just Cats

Without Sense of Self

In the context of meditation practice, meditators can experience a state of “pure awareness” or “pure consciousness”, in which they perceive consciousness itself. This state can be experienced in various ways, but evidently incorporates specific sensations as well as non-specific accompanying perceptions, feelings, and thoughts.

These are just some of the findings of the most extensive survey of meditators ever conducted on the experience of pure consciousness.

The findings of the survey recently have been published in PLOS ONE. The study was conducted by Professor Thomas Metzinger from the Department of Philosophy at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and Dr. Alex Gamma from the Psychiatric Hospital of the University of Zurich.

They designed an online questionnaire comprising more than a hundred questions and asked thousands of meditators worldwide to answer it.

“The goal of our research was not to learn more about meditation. We are interested in human consciousness,” said Metzinger. “Our working hypothesis was that pure consciousness is the simplest form of conscious experience. And our goal was to develop a minimal model explanation of human consciousness experience on the basis of this hypothesis.”  READ MORE

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Evolution

 

Our Border Wall

 Biden Administration Spending $3 Million a Day to Suspend Border Wall Construction: Senate ReportCONSERVATIVE NEWS DAILY - BREAKING NEWS -

Being Open Minded

 

Durham Report

When special counsel John Durham finishes his investigation into the origins of the Trump–Russia probe, his report will likely be made public, a Department of Justice official suggested in a newly released letter.

Durham is investigating the department’s counterintelligence operation against the 2016 Trump campaign and associates, which was riddled with errors and malfeasance.

The timeline for the probe to wrap up is unclear, but then-Attorney General William Barr indicated last year that the final report should be made public.

Noting that a confidential report on what the investigation found will be produced as required by law, Durham “to the maximum extent possible and consistent with the law and policies and practices of the Department of Justice, shall submit to the Attorney General a final report, and such interim reports as he deems appropriate, in a form that will permit public dissemination,” Barr wrote in an October 2020 order.

Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) pressed the DOJ in a recent letter over the hiring of Susan Hennessey, who has described the Durham probe as “partisan silliness,” to work in the National Security Division. They asked if she was involved at all with the Durham probe and asked when the investigation will be completed and whether the current administration agrees with Barr’s order on public dissemination.

In response, Joe Gaeta, deputy assistant attorney general, defended the hiring of Hennessey and said she’s not involved with the probe, given that Durham is utilizing his own staff.  READ MORE

Not That Bright

Reaching Out