Friday, June 18, 2010

Friday Night Miscellany

Hola darlings!  I haven't done one of these in a long time - and I'm dodging thunderstorms right now - I've got a clear spot but I don't know how long; the weather radar looks ominous! 

A real mixed bag of items this evening:

This is interesting.  If these findings hold up to scrutiny (and I'm sure there will be intense scrutiny because there are a lot of vested interests at stake), this new evidence that helps in pin-pointing the dates for ancient Egyptian dynasties is block-buster news in the world of archaeology.  From Science Daily:

Constraining the Reign of Ancient Egypt: Radiocarbon Dating Helps to Nail Down the Chronology of Kings, Researchers Say
ScienceDaily (June 18, 2010) — For several thousands of years, ancient Egypt dominated the Mediterranean world -- and scholars across the globe have spent more than a century trying to document the reigns of the various rulers of Egypt's Old, Middle and New Kingdoms. Now, a detailed radiocarbon analysis of short-lived plant remains from the region is providing scientists with a long and accurate chronology of ancient Egyptian dynasties that agrees with most previous estimates but also imposes some historic revisions.
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I haven't written much about idiot politicians - that's not our primary focus despite their giving us constant fodder!  But geez - I literally spit out a mouthful of coffee earlier today at the office while perusing The Wall Street Journal (I actually read it, darlings!) when I came across an article about a politician who called his constituents "unwashed" as in "the great unwashed masses...".  LOL!  Found plenty of commentary about this story this evening.  Here is one report:

From politifi.com: GA Sen. Isakson apologizes for 'unwashed' remark
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Amid rising heat over recent comments in which he referred to voters as the "unwashed," Sen. Johnny Isakson issued an apology Thursday, saying he meant no harm.

"It was a poor choice of words," Isakson said in a statement Thursday. "I didn't mean anything derogatory by it, and I sincerely apologize."

The apology came two days after Isakson, an incumbent who's up for re-election, made an off-the-cuff remark about a speech that Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle of Nevada gave to him and other Republican senators on Capitol Hill.

"It wasn't the kind of speech you would give to the unwashed back home," Isakson said of Angle's talk. His comments first appeared on a Fox News Web site. "She was talking to her colleagues." . . .

Yeah, right, Mr. Senator Incredibly Stupid Jerk!  We really believe you.
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From the Daily Grail, here's a sort of over-view of what psychologists call "sleep paralysis" and other people (mostly NOT psychologists) call lots of other things, and it's pretty good:
Taming the Night Mare
Posted by Greg at 12:30, 18 Jun 2010

by Ryan Hurd

Personally, I don't think being visited by a "uistache" (various spellings) - Night Mare also known as a Water Horse in the old Celtic legends - is meant to be a terror-inducing experience.  But because we are not familiar with the ancient symbolism, we don't know what the hell is happening and we fall back on half-remembered whisperings from childhood about demons and such.  If we have no frame of reference within which we can interpret an experience, yeah, it may very well be terror-inducing!  In psychological terms, a visit from a uistache is simply receiving a visit from our unconscious mind.  Unfortunately, in today's western societies, this is terra incognita

It's our loss; for the most part, we've lost the ability to appreciate chess as a meeting of those seen-and-unseen worlds meeting on a neutral plane of existence, where the elements of each reality can interact and play with each other freely, without pre-conception or constraint. 

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