From the Back Porch

What does it mean to be a Southerner?

Not an easy explanation, I'm afraid...  especially since some of you think being a Southerner is going back to the war between the states and saying you are a Confederate...  and, everyone knows that can't be true since that war ended in 1865, over 150 years ago...

So, if that ain't it...  then what is it?

Well...  for starters, one could say that if you were born in a Southern state then you are a Southerner...  but, what if you were born in a Northern state but live all of your life in a Southern state?

Are you a Northerner or a Southerner?

I have also been told that Southerners are more polite than Northerners and I suppose that is true based upon what I have experienced when visiting the North...  but, I have seen some Southerners who were rude as hell and they were born and raised in the South...   so that theory doesn't work...

Or, as they say down South...  that dog don't hunt.

Maybe it is the accent that makes Southerners a southerner...   However, I was born down here and lived down here all my life, in different southern states, but I don't have a typical southern accent.

So...  another dog that don't hunt.

It would appear that if you are living in the South that you are a southerner.  

If you are living in the north you are a northerner.

If you are living in the east, you are an easterner.

If you are living in the west, you are a westerner.

If you are living somewhere in the middle, then it would appear that you are just shit out of luck...

Crystals

The James Webb Telescope

The $10bn James Webb telescope has left Earth on its mission to show the first stars to light up the Universe.

The observatory was lifted skyward by an Ariane rocket from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana.

Its flight to orbit lasted just under half an hour, with a signal confirming a successful outcome picked up by a ground antenna at Malindi in Kenya.

Webb, named after one of the architects of the Apollo Moon landings, is the successor to the Hubble telescope.

Engineers working with the US, European and Canadian space agencies have built the new observatory to be 100 times more powerful, however.

"Lift off from a tropical rainforest to the edge of time itself, James Webb begins a voyage back to the birth of the Universe," said American space agency (Nasa) TV commentator Rob Navias at the moment the rocket left the Earth.

Lift-off was eagerly awaited but accompanied also by a good deal of anxiety. Thousands of people worldwide have worked on the project over the past 30 years, and even though the Ariane is a very dependable vehicle - there are no guarantees when it comes to rockets.  READ MORE...

Classic Sunday Morning Newspaper Cartoons

 

A Global Reopening

Two years after the US went into its first lockdown, the country is getting nearer to a pre-pandemic existence. But what about the rest of the world?

When California issued a statewide stay-at-home order on 19 March 2020, most people thought that life would return to normal relatively quickly.

A full 24 months later, people are finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, with restrictions being eased in the US and several other countries.

But with some places experiencing record numbers of cases yet again, it's clear that the pandemic isn't ready to let go its grip just yet.

We asked our correspondents in the UK, Hong Kong, South Africa, New Zealand, Canada, Peru and the US to give us a snapshot.

A very light touch - England
Nick Triggle, London


England's last remaining Covid restriction - the legal requirement to isolate after a positive test - was lifted at the end of February.

It came a month after the government lifted the requirement to wear masks in places such as shops and on public transport and the advice to work from home where possible.

But the truth is England has had a pretty light-touch approach to regulations compared to many places since the summer.

The masks mandate and working from home advice was only reintroduced in late 2021 as the Omicron variant took off.

The approach is based on the fact that vaccines are providing great protection and England has seen very good uptake among those groups most at risk - 95% of over-60s have had a booster jab.

It has meant that despite the surge in infections caused by the Omicron variant, the number of people dying has been similar to what would normally be seen during a normal winter.

There are signs infections may be starting to climb again, but it is causing little concern at the moment.  

TO READ MORE ABOUT COUNTRIES AROUND THE WORLD, CLICK HERE...

Norway Water

 

Protestors in Afghanistan - Open Schools

About two dozen, mainly female, protesters gathered close to the Taliban's Ministry of Education on Saturday morning, calling on the group to reopen girls' secondary schools.


The Taliban have been widely condemned for issuing a last-minute U-turn earlier this week, ordering them to close, just hours after teenage pupils began to arrive for the start of the new academic year.


The protesters chanted, "Education is our right! Open the doors of girls' schools!" while armed Taliban members looked on.


One female teacher attending told the BBC: "When it comes to standing up for freedom and the girls who want to go to school, I'm willing to die.


"We are here for the rights of our daughters to get an education. Without that right, we might as well be dead already."


The Taliban has previously broken up demonstrations and detained those involved, but on this occasion the protest was allowed to continue.


Since the group took power last August, girls' primary schools in most of the country, along with all boys' schools, have remained open, but older girls have not been allowed back in the classroom.  READ MORE...

Passing Train

Political Cartoons

 

Give This Some Brain Time Dude

I don't suppose any of yous have ever read the Constitution...  the US Constitution is what Imma talking 'bout...  didn't think so...  I also doubt that any of yous know about our founding fathers...  who they were, what they thought...  what they were trying to do...  didn't think so...  yet, here you are...  here we are, living in this country, living under a constitution that we haven't read, don't really know about it or its purpose other than it gives us freedoms and allows us to own guns and in some places carry them on our person anywhere we wants to go...  

And, I also betcha that you are white like me which is why you don't really care about the constitution...  because if you are white then the constitution does not take you for granted...  as it does if you are black...

How does I knows this...  I gots me lots of black friends...

Our US Constitution was written by WHITES that were WEALTHY and who (for the most part) owned black slaves.  Some of these slaves were treated well, but some were not.  Our US Constitution did not even recognize them as a WHOLE PERSON...  can you believe that?

SO...  our founding fathers did not write the Constitution for everybody...  they only wrote it for the white people...  who they must have deemed as superior...  although the only people that they really thought were superior were themselves...  the WEALTHY WHITES...

Today...  it is no different...  WEALTHY WHITES control everything...  and, while there are some blacks that have become wealthy, these wealthy blacks are acting more like WEALTHY WHITES than WEALTHY WHITES are...

These enlightened black people believe that our US CONSTITUTION should be rewritten to reflect not just the black population but ALL MINORITIES...  and, while they have a good point...  it would set a dangerous precedent because I don't think the smartest people that we currently have in this country are as smart as our founding fathers were...  while that might be sad, it is nonetheless true.

Our Democratic Republic is fragile.  We are the only country in the world that has the freedoms that we have...  How will taking some of those freedoms away change us?  Will we one day regret that change?  

The other issue of our Democratic Republic is our free market enterprise system of commerce.  Not like any other in the world and so far very successful...  But what happens if these wealthy, powerful companies try to change our behavior to suit the products they are trying to sell?  

Do we want them to control us like that?

Is the enemy the constitution or the wealthy white man or the wealthy company?

How far will we let big tech control us through social media that they and only they regulate?

 

Accidental Memories

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It was only a couple of years ago, that my wife and I visit Europe and spent some time in Paris, France, and sat at one of these tables, enjoying our meal outside while we watched the locals and tourists walk by.

What was memorable for us (especially me) were all the typical and usual tourist sites that we visited, spending more time than necessary letting the traditional beauty of the city sink into our Southern and country (but not pure country) minds.  One of these items was the fact that there were very few public bathrooms there and you had to sit down at an outside cafe and order something if you wanted to use their facilities.

Needless to say, we did not drink as much liquid there as we would have consumed if we had stayed at home.

The French I learned in high school was all but gone by the time we got there so I could practice and my southern American accent did not do me any favors either...  so, we ended up pointing at things we wanted in the menu and hoped for the best when our food arrived.

We were never disappointed although sometimes we were uncertain as to what we were eating.  We had a translation app on our smartphones but never used it...  not sure why other than we really did not know that we had it until we returned home...  so, that must have been the reason...  lol.

Will we ever travel to Europe again?

That's a fair question and my answer is also fair...  I/we don't know for sure...

Covid has scared us away from all traveling except stateside.

Our state never had a lockdown during the last two years and said facemasks were optional, but a majority of the people wore them...  exercise their freedom of compliance, I suppose, and common sense.

Life in America and throughout the world has changed and I am not sure if we will ever return to a pre-covid normal...  my wife and I trust ourselves but we simply cannot trust everyone else...  and this has nothing to do with color, political ideologies, or religious/spiritual beliefs.

My Biased Views

Why are there no nuclear-powered commercial airplanes?

We don't have nuclear-powered planes because of multiple problems:

First  -- nuclear generators need a lot of room to operate, so it would be hard to put/install one on a plane. 

Second  --  no pilot would want to be sitting next to a nuclear generator for their flight; the radioactivity, if uncontained, would be catastrophic.

Therefore...  and, this is just my opinion...  I would think that we would still need to use fossil fuels, petroleum crude oil, jet fuel, even if the rest of the USA went GREEN...

Cruise ships and Naval Vessels are large enough to install fusion reactors for nuclear power but the rest of us will have to settle for electric cars, buses, trains, and motorcycles...

It also makes sense to convert our homes, apartment complexes, farms, office buildings over to SOLAR ENERGY rather than even think about nuclear fusion there...  although, we can build and maintain nuclear power plants to supplement the SOLAR...

All my hand tools nowadays run off of batteries, including my weed eater and blower, and the small tiller that I use for small areas is powered by electricity via an extension cord.

SO...  it is really unreasonable to think that the USA or the entire world (for that matter) is going to go completely GREEN...  if we want to continue using commercial airplanes to fly us from one location to another...  and yet, those who are pushing the GREEN AGENDA have never mentioned that we will still need fossil fuel for them...  isn't that kinda misleading the public?

The one big issue I have with electric cars is not the charging for local travel at night while you are sleeping but the charging if you ever decided to go on vacation where you will need to recharge en route.  It takes 8-12 hours to recharge a vehicle...  so what do you do for those 8-12 hours that you need to recharge?

Let's say you are halfway to Myrtle Beach, SC and you need to recharge and it is 2pm...  The restaurants don't have charging stations.  The convenience stores don't have charging stations.  The motels don't have charging stations...  so, once you find a charging station...  what if all the slots are taken by other people waiting 8-12 hours to recharge their vehicle...  DO YOU SIT IN YOUR ELECTRIC CAR AND WAIT IN THE HOT SUN?

If we do have a huge push towards electric vehicles because the cost of gasoline is so high and the government refuses to extract oil locally and keeps pipelines closed, then I will have no desire to go on vacation and will find ALTERNATIVE WAYS to enjoy a vacation.

This is what economists call SUBSTITUTION...  when a product exceeds a certain price, the buyer will simply substitute another similar product at a lower cost...  one day a winner and a moneymaker, the next day a loser, and the company folds.  

GOOD OLE AMERICAN PROGRESS...

Approaching Waves

Vikings Left Greenland in the 15th Century

One of the great mysteries of late medieval history is why did the Norse, who had established successful settlements in southern Greenland in 985, abandon them in the early 15th century? The consensus view has long been that colder temperatures, associated with the Little Ice Age, helped make the colonies unsustainable. 

However, new research, led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst and published recently in Science Advances, upends that old theory. It wasn't dropping temperatures that helped drive the Norse from Greenland, but drought.

When the Norse settled in Greenland on what they called the Eastern Settlement in 985, they thrived by clearing the land of shrubs and planting grass as pasture for their livestock. The population of the Eastern Settlement peaked at around 2,000 inhabitants, but collapsed fairly quickly about 400 years later. 

For decades, anthropologists, historians and scientists have thought the Eastern Settlement's demise was due to the onset of the Little Ice Age, a period of exceptionally cold weather, particularly in the North Atlantic, that made agricultural life in Greenland untenable.

However, as Raymond Bradley, University Distinguished Professor of geosciences at UMass Amherst and one of the paper's co- author, points out, "before this study, there was no data from the actual site of the Viking settlements. And that's a problem." 

Instead, the ice core data that previous studies had used to reconstruct historical temperatures in Greenland was taken from a location that was over 1,000 kilometers to the north and over 2,000 meters higher in elevation. "We wanted to study how climate had varied close to the Norse farms themselves," says Bradley. And when they did, the results were surprising.  READ MORE...

Thirsty

 

AI Combat Drone

Boeing announced the name of its newest combat drone on Monday: the MQ-28A Ghost Bat. The drone, which is being produced in Australia, utilizes artificial intelligence and is part of what was previously known as the Loyal Wingman project—an initiative to give fighter pilots an uncrewed partner in the sky.

“The introduction of the new popular name is a rare and special moment in aviation history for our RAAF partners and industry team of over 35 Australian suppliers,” Glen Ferguson, director at Australia’s Boeing Airpower Teaming System, said in a statement on Boeing’s website.

“Selecting the Ghost Bat, an Australian native mammal known for teaming together in a pack to detect and hunt, reflects the unique characteristics of the aircraft’s sensors and Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance abilities, and is a fitting name for this pioneering capability,” Ferguson said.

This new generation of drones is intended to fly alongside crewed fighter jets and assist in everything from jamming radar to conducting surveillance to firing on targets.  READ MORE...

Dancing Dog

 

Pyramids Not Created by Aliens

Because I once made the mistake of dabbling in Egyptology, some ‘friend’ will schwack me every other week with a meme, cartoon or article about people who still believe the pyramids were built by aliens. I have longed for a handy single volume to present to these loons, full of unarguable evidence putting this business past dispute – and Pierre Tallet and Mark Lehner have provided it.

In 2013 excavators in Egypt’s Eastern Desert on the Gulf of Suez uncovered the world’s most ancient harbour installation at Wadi el-Jarf. Here they unearthed a cache containing the oldest extant inscribed papyri (c.2607-5 BCE). And in that they found ‘unique and unprecedented testimony relating to one of the world’s most famous monuments’ which has inspired and perplexed visitors for almost five millennia: the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Little green men or Atlantean speculation is both a failure and an overuse of the imagination. But the pyramids, of course, are mind-boggling. For the Great Pyramid, King Khufu’s quarrymen hand-sculpted more than six hectares of rock to level the plateau and form a basic foundation, to legendary degrees of accuracy with regard to both the Earth and heavens. The block-hauling ramps alone are thought to have contained as much as 400,000 cubic metres of sand and rock – and perhaps only reached a fifth of the way up the edifice. The masons dressed precisely ‘67,127 square metres of the outer surface of the pyramid casing with copper chisels the width of an index finger’. The outer surface!

A ‘human disturbance on a geological scale’, the funerary complex of the Great Pyramid was so large that it incorporated other pyramids. The building site also contained an entire administrative city – ‘a kind of Old Kingdom Egyptian equivalent of Versailles’ – complete with an artificial inland port to take hydraulic advantage of the Nile flood.

In this book, handwritten scribal records – the ‘oldest known explicitly dated Egyptian documents’ – pick up the story of the middle-ranking inspector Merer and his 40-man naval gang. Merer was the captain of ‘Team Great’, an elite, adaptable outfit that transported the ‘grunt’ labour force and maintained the waterways around Giza, ferried limestone blocks up and down the Nile, provisioned and managed stores at the plateau and undertook expeditions to Sinai and Punt – lands, if not of milk and honey, of turquoise, myrrh and much needed copper for stone-working tools. ‘The builders of the gigantic pyramids of the 4th Dynasty must have amassed more copper... than was being accumulated anywhere else in the world.’


Interestingly, Tallet and Lehner argue that Merer and his men represented not vast slave labour, exploited by a biblical despot, but ‘the employment of a highly skilled, well-rewarded workforce’. Team Great worked in proximity to power – also performing royal guard duties and religious rituals – and were part-paid in luxury cloth. But it is also estimated that four teams like Merer’s might have spent 20 years transporting just the facing stone for the Great Pyramid.  READ MORE...

Cocktails

Caucasian Born