Lyle Northey (Silent/Boomer)

The Patriot web site had an article about Tim Walz being arrested for DUI in Nebraska. As bad as that sounds it can hardly compare to 34 felony convictions and being found guilty of rape not to mention all the charges yet to come for stealing secrets etc.
Mud is a great thing to throw if you have every right to throw it and lack the civility to not be judgemental as in what does your record look like. The other part of the equation is that you can not be standing in quicksand when you are being so righteous. If you have a completely clean record it is more likely that you just never got caught, not that you have never done anything to get you arrested.
One of the biggest losses that we have suffered as a nation since the beginning of the Trump campaign to be elected and the subsequent whining about not being re-elected is civility. Donny does not know how to be civil to anyone. His is a world of building yourself up by tearing others down. Everyone is on the take, everyone is out to get me, everyone is a loser. We have listened to this line of choke since 2015 and will no doubt be subject to it through the next 4 years regardless of the outcome of the election.
It is time to take back our humanity and start acting like we are all citizens of this nation and not the puppets of a sick and shrinking mind or the enemy of those puppets. If he does not get elected it will be a bloodbath. Should it turn out that way the ones that turn out to create this bloodbath need to be the first victims of the slaughter.
The constant use of terms that demean and belittle people, divide people and in general insult everyone’s intelligence has no place in our future if we hope to move forward. The damage done by Trump and his belligerent attitude and now picking another of the same cloth is not going to improve our standing with our allies and only gives comfort and possibly amusement to our enemies.

“SOS” doesn’t actually stand for anything.

WORLD HISTORY

After more than a century of use as a maritime distress signal, “SOS” has become shorthand for just about any emergency. You may have heard that it stands for “save our ship” or “save our souls,” but that’s actually a backronym, or an acronym made up after the fact. The letters in “SOS” didn’t initially stand for anything; they were originally chosen because they form a sequence of Morse code that can be transmitted more quickly than others.

Morse code (named for Samuel Morse) is a way of transmitting phrases with light flashes or electrical pulses; each letter and numeral has its own sequence of between one and five short bursts (known as “dots” or “dits”) and long bursts (“dashes” or “dahs”). In 1901, inventor Guglielmo Marconi created a radio transmitter that could send Morse code signals across the Atlantic, allowing ships to communicate with other vessels and land-based stations. British operators were already using “CQ,” or “seeking you,” as a signal to alert all stations, so Marconi’s wireless company recommended “CQD,” or “seeking you, distress,” as an emergency signal. Meanwhile, the United States usually used “NC,” the Germans used “SOE,” and Italians used “SSSDDD.” But the problem with all of these is they required brief pauses between the letters.

Delegates at the 1906 International Radiotelegraph Conference suggested a simpler, more standardized distress call. The letters “S” and “O” — three dots and three dashes, respectively — are extremely simple and easy to understand without any spaces, so “SOS” could be transmitted on a quick, continuous loop. Most countries officially adopted the code in 1908 and, even though the U.S. was not among them, an American ship was the first to use the signal when its propeller snapped. “CQD” remained popular with the British even after other countries had adopted “SOS,” and when the RMS Titanic sank in 1912, it signaled for help with both “SOS” and “CQD.” By that time, the backronym had already taken hold. During the British government inquiry on the Titanic disaster, Attorney General Rufus Isaacs was under the impression that “SOS” stood for “save our souls.”

Rome still uses an aqueduct built during the Roman Empire.

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is a motto that works well for Rome. Because of the incredibly advanced craftsmanship of ancient Rome’s architects, as well as their remarkably long-lasting building materials (more on that below), many of the ancient empire’s most marvelous construction projects can still be seen by millions of tourists today — some 6 million people visit the Colosseum each year alone. However, the most amazing engineering achievement might be Rome’s eye-catching aqueducts, one of which still supplies Rome with watermillennia after it was built. 

While the Romans didn’t invent the aqueduct — primitive irrigation systems can be found in Egyptian, Assyrian, and Babylonian history — Roman architects perfected the idea. In 312 BCE, the famed Roman leader Appius Claudius Caecuserected the first aqueduct, the Aqua Appia, which brought water to the growing population of the Roman Republic. Today, the Acqua Vergine — first built during the reign of Emperor Augustus in 19 BCE as the Aqua Virgo — still supplies Rome with water more than 2,000 years after its construction (though it’s been through several restorations). 

The main reason for the aqueduct’s longevity, along with that of many of Rome’s ancient buildings, is its near-miraculous recipe for concrete. An analysis by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology discovered that Roman concrete could essentially self-heal due to its lime clasts (small mineral chunks) and a process known as “hot mixing” (mixing in the lime at extremely high temperatures). Today, researchers are studying how the material functioned in the hopes of applying secrets from the “Eternal City” to today’s building materials.

Rabbits’ Feet… not good luck for the rabbit

The origin of rabbits’ feet as a good luck charm may go back as far as ancient Rome, when the feet of hares and rabbits were thought to have medicinal powers. For centuries in Europe, people carried paws from rabbits or hares for their supposed effects against cramps and other ailments. The idea of rabbits’ feet as good luck then transformed in America, where it may have been appropriated from an African culture, or based on a joke among African Americans that European Americans didn’t fully understand. In the early 20th century, merchants started selling rabbits’ feet with marketing claiming that they’d been harvested under spooky circumstances, like under the dark of the moon on a Friday the 13th; Black people were often said to have been the ones doing the harvesting.

The use of the symbol could also be connected to the Hand of Glory, a hand cut from a hanged man, usually the left one, and often pickled, after which it was said to have mystical powers. In a sense, the use of the rabbit’s foot was thought to stand in for the human appendage.

Lyle Northey (Silent/Boomer)

Again the news of how different the political parties handle things in house and in the public venue has been brought to our attention.
It seems that President Biden is attempting to appoint some new judges to the various benches as is the custom of Presidents to do. These appointments must be approved by the Senate and they must go through a particular committee before they can be given to the Senate for voting. As it turns out there are names in this pipeline that have been held up since 2022 by republican Senators.
The fact that they are not pushed forward is not surprising but the refusal to move forward at all is really quite irksome. When the Trump administration was in and names were brought to the Senate committee and there were objections from democratic Senators Mitch McConnel just overlooked the objection and moved forward. So the question is, of course, why are the democrats not doing the same thing this time?Has anyone heard of “Two wrongs don’t make a right”?
Simple things to say, and doing the right thing even when no one is watching is a great concept, when you are faced with an opponent that has no shame for doing whatever to win it really must be difficult not to cheat. The charge of cheating has been thrown at the democrats for several years now and the people making the accusations are the ones that have been cheating. It is okay by the media since most major media outlets are in favor of that party anyway. Doe not make it right, just makes it nebulous by their standards.
Now they are claiming that having Biden step down from the campaign is cheating as they have spent so much money on how to beat him and he is not the target anymore. The new candidate is not being taken down with the bs they were using. As a matter of fact that tactic now applies to the republicans and they are not happy about it.
How is this all going to pan out? It is hoped that the election will result in a major victory for Harris and Walz and that we will keep our independence and move forward in recovering from the negativity of Trump. The cult that has followed him may be tempted to try and overturn the election as they did on Jan 6 but I do not believe that effort will stand much of a chance.
The people that have served this nation and fought and died for her are not losers or fools. The greatest honor one can have as a citizen is to be of service to their nation. It is a common feeling by public servants and military personnel around the world. All that serve feel that there is a valid reason for that service even when others view those efforts to be negative. Most do not serve under duress.
No matter what the fight is about, the political determination of those in power is the cause for the fight, not the soldier on the ground. That soldier would just as soon be in the backyard having a beer and cooking hamburgers as being shot at.
No one likes to be cheated, but many of us can not bring ourselves to cheat to make up for the bad behavior of others.

Marie Curie’s notebooks are still radioactive and will be for more than a millennium.

A lot has changed in the 90 years since Marie Curie’s death, but one thing that hasn’t is the status of her notebooks — they’re still radioactive. Not having the benefit of hindsight despite being one of the 20th century’s most pioneering scientists, Curie was known to store radioactive elements out in the open, in part because she enjoyed how they “looked like faint, fairy lights.” She even walked around her lab with them in her pockets. 

Consequently, her clothes, furniture, and even cookbooks are also radioactive, and will be for the next 1,500 years. In order to be as safe as possible with her remaining materials, France’s national library stores Curie’s notebooks in lead-lined boxes to this day, and anyone wishing to view her manuscripts must sign a waiver and wear protective gear. Her other personal items are stored with similar precautions at the Musée Curie (Curie Museum) in Paris. Curie herself died of aplastic anemia in 1934, likely due to her prolonged exposure to radiation. She didn’t know that she was essentially giving her own life in the pursuit of science, but her unwitting sacrifice has only added to her singular legacy.

Hurricanes used to only be named after women.

SCIENCE & INDUSTRY

Before the 20th century, there was no uniform method for naming hurricanes in the U.S., though some other parts of the world saw creative naming conventions. Residents of the West Indies, for example, named hurricanes after patron saints. And 19th-century British meteorologist Clement Wragge used characters from Greek and Roman mythology, as well as the last names of his political enemies, for typhoons in the Pacific Ocean. He also began a tradition that eventually made its way across the Atlantic: using women’s names for hurricanes.

Until the 1940s, hurricanes in the U.S. were generally referred to simply by the year and/or place they occurred, such as the “Great Miami Hurricane of 1926.” That changed during World War II, when Navy and Air Force meteorologists began to name the tropical storms they tracked after their girlfriends and wives for easier reference. For a time, the U.S. military also experimented with naming storms after its phonetic alphabet — Able, Baker, Charlie, and so on — but this was replaced with a system thought to be less confusing and easier for the public to remember. In 1954, the National Weather Bureau chose to use women’s names as the standard for hurricanes; that year saw Alice, Barbara, Carol, and others. 

But why women’s names, specifically? The decision was partially inspired by the trend that began during the war, though it was also rooted in sexist stereotypes about the temperamental nature of women. The practice continued in the U.S. until the 1970s, when members of the women’s movement spoke out against the negative characterization of women that pervaded every facet of society, including storm-naming. In 1979, the National Weather Service and the World Meteorological Association changed the naming convention to include an even split of women’s and men’s names, using six groups of 26 names that rotate annually.