Revolution

 

Ancient Human Remains in Spain

Human remains are found in a cave, and unearthed to be analyzed by Tibicena, an archaeology company, in Galdar, on the island of Gran Canaria, Spain March 13, 2023.(photo credit: Tibicena Arqueologia y Patrimonio S.L./Handout via REUTERS)



Ancient human remains that were buried in caves in Spain have been shown to be modified prior to their burial, according to a recent study.

The research, published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS ONE on Wednesday last week, examines the Cueva de los Marmoles, one of the most important cave contexts from southern Spain.

The significance of this cave is that it "returned a large number of commingled skeletal remains suggesting its funerary use from the Neolithic to the Late Bronze Age," the study said. However, the reason why these buried remains were modified still remains a mystery to researchers.


Researchers in the study also explored the fragmentation patterns that characterized different skeletal regions and took both macroscopic and microscopic analyses of whatever modifications were made to the human remains.

Radiocarbon data
The study concluded that through radiocarbon data, the remains date back several millennia, and also estimates that the minimum amount of people's remains discovered number up to 12 - seven adults and five children. 

The research does acknowledge that caves have been used as burial sites in the Iberian Peninsula for thousands of years, with its practice being originated in the 4th millennium BCE.  READ MORE...

Trump

 

How To Live Your Life

It is so easy today, because of social media, to become influenced by celebrities whether they are from Hollywood or athletics.  For some reason we look up to these people and I for one cannot figure out why.

• Yes, they are rich
• Yes, they are attractive
• They overconsume alcohol
• They overconsume drugs
• They are obsessed with tattoos
• They have multiple marriages
• They have multiple children
• They believe the law does not apply to them

Is this who you really want to emulate?

What's wrong with who you are?

So, the first lesson to living a successful life is accept who you are and stop worrying about who you would like to be.

Next, forget about following the advice of your parents, your teachers, your preacher, your peers, or your friends...

So, what the hell do I do now?

Well...  use the internet to find out what you want to be and what it takes to get there.

There are lots of jobs that will provide you with a financially safe future if you just look for them and put your preconceived ideas and biases behind you.

Go to college if you want to but be smart about it.

Go to a community college your first two years.

Work while you go in order to pay for your next two years or sometimes your employer will pay.

Start out small and work up.  I talked with a restaurant owner the other day who told me he started out as bussing tables.  He worked his way up and eventually became the manager and then the owner.  He is financially well off and has no college loan debt.  His life has been happy, and he feels successful.

So...  what's wrong with that?

The second lesson to a successful life is always give 110% even when you don't feel like it.  In so doing, you will begin to look for things that need to be done, rather than being told what to do.  While you work for someone else, you are actually managing yourself not the other way around.

The third lesson is kind to people.  Do unto others what you would like them to do unto you EVEN WHEN THEY DON'T DO IT...  It is easy to get made and want revenge, but it is difficult to walk away and let it pass.  You want to control anger and not let anger control you...  regardless of the situation in which you might find yourself.

The fourth lesson is learn how to balance your life so that you can give everyone, INCLUDING YOURSELF, what they/you need.  That includes, work, family, friends, and rejuvenation of self.  You must learn to sharpen the saw...  the saw being yourself.  You also must learn to focus.  When at home, don't think about work and when at work, don't think about home.  There is a time and a place for everything...  it will take a little time to learn that.

The fifth lesson is learn to enjoy life.  See life as something that is positive rather than negative.  Tun negatives into positives.  Plan for the best but expect the worst.  In other words, have contingency plans.  The better you are at planning the better your life will be.  Don't make a plan and file it away.  Execute that plan every day and revisit the plan every week.

Don't look back - always look ahead.

Monster

 

FedEx's New Robot

FEDEX UNVEILED A two-armed robot called DexR this week that’s designed to automate one of the trickiest tasks facing the company’s human employees—loading a truck with packages.


The new robot aims to use artificial intelligence to stack rows of differently sized boxes inside a delivery truck as efficiently as possible, attempting to maximize how many will fit.


That task is far from easy for a machine. “Packages come in different sizes, shapes, weights, and packaging materials, and they come randomized,” says Rebecca Yeung, vice president of operations and advanced technology at FedEx. 

The robot uses cameras and lidar sensors to perceive the packages and must then plan how to configure the available boxes to make a neat wall, place them snugly without crushing anything, and react appropriately if any packages slip.


“A few years ago, AI was not at a stage where it was smart enough to handle this kind of complex decision-making,” Yeung says. DexR is currently in testing, ahead of a wider rollout at FedEx at some point in the future.


While generative AI tools like ChatGPT have created a sense in many industries that AI technology is ready to take on just about anything, handling objects in the messy, unpredictable real world still poses formidable challenges for algorithms. 

Most industrial robots are designed to carry out highly repetitive jobs with extreme precision, but no variation. 
READ MORE...

We Didn't Start It

 

Worlds Largest Cruise Ship

 

Tachyons Are Cosmic Engines of Time Travel

A reactor core gives off the blue glow of Cherenkov radiation — one of the few ways in which a tachyon may be detected.   Image by Argonne National Laboratory.

Interstellar travel is the greatest challenge mankind will ever face. Not only because it’s so grandiose and marked by impressive shimmering spacecraft — tall and boundless, scaled by materials born of human ingenuity — but because it’s a necessary step in exploration and understanding of the cosmos. 

It becomes ever more necessary as time goes on, and ever more difficult. This is the complication we face.

Soon, even speeds approaching that of light may not be enough as our universe continues to expand at an enormous rate. The light of our closest star systems and galaxies will struggle to make their way to us, their existence visible only in our books and our computer programs which will have to remind us that the surrounding sky didn’t always look so empty. 

At lightspeed today travel between star systems would take years for a one-way trip. As much of a feat as luminal speeds are, they may someday prove to be insufficient themselves. But where the speed of light has presented to us an obstruction, so too is there a peculiar hope. There are, after all, two sides to every limit.

A comment Einstein makes in his 1905 paper reads, “…velocities greater than that of light have no possibility of existence.” 

But modern science and mathematics have found clever ways around this, loopholes which permit superluminal speeds without contradicting the theory of relativity.  READ MORE...

Puppies

 

Filing Our Taxes

Every year on or before April 15, we met with our tax preparer to file an extension.  We file this extension not because we want to delay paying so we can earn more interest on our money but because we don't receive the K-1s that are needed to support our taxes.  They are typically not sent out until August or September of that same year.

The extension gives us an extra 6 months before we have to file our taxes for the previous year.  That new deadline is October 15.  So, sometime around the end of September, we get with our tax preparer with our K-1s to file our taxes.

Many people prepare their own taxes to save the money of having to pay a tax preparer...  but we pay our tax preparer $100 so it saves a lot of hassle for just a little amount of money.  This year we get back $120 and paid out $100 plus a little bit of our time.

While we were there we asked if she could project out taxes for the next year.  After making a few assumptions, it took her 5 minutes to get the answer.  Yes...  next year we will be paying a hell of a lot more in taxes than we paid this year.

REASON:  We made a shitload of money by investing in high yield CDs over a period of 18 months although we are only looking at 12 of those 18 months.

The way that it will work out for us is that our taxes will represent about 11% of what we earned.  This means, we will be able to keep 91% of our earnings which is not a bad return.

Because we are in the state of Tennessee, our Social Security is not taxed.

If we calculate the taxes we will pay as a percentage of our total income for that year, it will be 6%.  Again, we will be able to keep 94% of our total income for that year.

Our positive situation is directly related to the amount of money that we have been able to save over the course of our lifetimes....  or at least up until we retired.

The money you earn while you are working is typically used to pay a mortgage, school loans, food, utilities, insurance, car payments, etc.  More often than not, couples today do not save money for retirement.  They also acquire lots of debt that must be serviced before they retire.

POOR FINANCIAL PLANNING leads to a devastating retired lifestyle...

LEARN TO BE FINANCIALLY SMART WITH YOUR MONEY...

 

Mountain Lake

 

Inbreeding Can Be Beneficial

The Svalbard reindeer, despite significant inbreeding and low genetic diversity, boasts a robust population of over 20,000, having adapted to Arctic conditions with unique traits like smaller size and the ability to digest mosses. Although they have evolved rapidly to past environmental changes, scientists fear the pace of current global warming may outstrip their capacity to adapt, posing a serious threat to their survival.



Reindeer have endured for over 7,000 years on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard. Will they be able to withstand climate change?


Despite the challenges of inbreeding and limited genetic diversity, the Svalbard reindeer have remarkably adapted to harsh living conditions in an extraordinarily short period, a situation researchers term a genetic paradox. However, the question remains: can they withstand the impacts of climate change?


“Of all the subspecies of reindeer found in the high north, the Svalbard reindeer has the most inbreeding and the lowest genetic diversity,” says Nicolas Dussex, a postdoc at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s (NTNU) Department of Natural History.


It was only 7000-8000 years ago that the first reindeer migrated to Svalbard, most likely from Russia via Novaya Zemlya and the islands of Franz Josef Land. Perhaps there were no more than a few animals that established themselves on the Arctic archipelago. Evolutionary theory suggests this is a poor starting point since inbreeding can quickly lead to an accumulation of harmful mutations and genetic variants followed by disease and death.


But this has not prevented the Svalbard reindeer from evolving into what is today a viable population of more than 20,000 animals.

“Despite the low genetic diversity, they have managed to develop a number of adaptations to life in the High Arctic. They are, for example, smaller in size and have shorter legs than other northern reindeer and caribou subspecies,” says Dussex.

The ability to digest mosses in the absence of lichens, and to adjust their circadian rhythm to the extreme seasonal variations on Svalbard, are also traits the Svalbard reindeer have developed over the relatively short time they have lived isolated on the archipelago. 

Now, researchers at NTNU and collaborating institutions have analyzed genetic samples from 91 reindeer to see how they differ from their relatives on the mainland.  READ MORE...

Ghostrider Gunship

 

Stingrays

 

Classic Sunday Morning Newspaper Cartoons

 

The Aging Process

Today, represents the first day of October in the year 2023.  Like all months, once the month is over, it will never be seen again unless it is in photographs...  such is the movement of time.

Time moves forward.  Each day that passes, we age a little more.  As our age increases, the passage of time seems to move faster, even though its rate has not changed at all.

We try to maintain our youth with:

• exercise
• diets
• cosmetics
• surgery
• pills and creams
• hair transplants
• tonics

Some people continue to lift weights and take steroids to keep their bodies lean and mean up until the age of 80 and sometimes beyond...  But eventually, bodies break down and muscles atrophy and turn to fat...  it is inevitable.

Yet, we pursue this dream and fantasy nonetheless as if we can somehow manage to evade our destiny.

My hair began to turn grey in my twenties and in my forties, I began losing my hair.  I just accepted what was happening.  I had no desire to try and regrow my hair or change it to another color in an effort to make me look younger.

While I have always been active most of my life until about age 60, I was able to maintain a lean body with a flat stomach, regardless of what I ate or how much of it I ate.  That too changed at age 60 and I started gaining weight.

My immediate response was to start exercising...  but several physical therapists and doctors told me the only way to lose weight was not by exercise but by reducing the amount of food I ate each day.

As one ages one's metabolism changes and one needs to eat less in order to maintain one's current weight.  If one maintains their level of eating, they will automatically gain weight.

I exercise because it helps my heart function properly and because it is a necessary function of recovery from having back fusion surgery.  It is not how long I walk but how often I walk.  I should be walking for about 15-20 minutes 3 times a day.

Walking used to be a normal easy activity for me to accomplish.  I loved to walk and had no problems walking uphill or downhill or flat.  I did not walk fast but I did walk at a normal pace.  I could walk for a long time like that unless it was unusually hot or cold.

After my back surgery, walking was a chore, and it was like I had to force myself to walk.  It was no longer enjoyable.  The surgery was successful because I could walk but it changed how I walked.

All this is part of the aging process, and it is something with which we have to accept and move on...  otherwise, getting old will leave us miserable.

Somewhat Political

 

Einstein Was Wrong About Gravity

Einstein's theory of gravity—general relativity—has been very successful for more than a century. However, it has theoretical shortcomings. This is not surprising: the theory predicts its own failure at spacetime singularities inside black holes—and the Big Bang itself.

Unlike physical theories describing the other three fundamental forces in physics—the electromagnetic and the strong and weak nuclear interactions—the general theory of relativity has only been tested in weak gravity.

Deviations of gravity from general relativity are by no means excluded nor tested everywhere in the universe. And, according to theoretical physicists, deviation must happen.

Deviations and quantum mechanics
According to a theory initially proposed by Georges Lemaître and widely accepted by the astronomical community, our universe originated in a Big Bang. 

Other singularities hide inside black holes: Space and time cease to have meaning there, while quantities such as energy density and pressure become infinite. These signal that Einstein's theory is failing there and must be replaced with a more fundamental one.

Naively, spacetime singularities should be resolved by quantum mechanics, which apply at very small scales.

Quantum physics relies on two simple ideas: point particles make no sense; and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which states that one can never know the value of certain pairs of quantities with absolute precision—for example, the position and velocity of a particle. 

This is because particles should not be thought of as points but as waves; at small scales they behave as waves of matter.  READ MORE...

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