Lyle Northey (Silent/Boomer)

We are at a confused and dangerous time in our nation. We have a centralized government, Congress and the President and associated departments. Then we have 50 or 51 states and DC as well as the administrations running our protectorate areas, Puerto Rico, Guam etc.
Each seems to feel that they have the authority to write laws to suit the local ideas or wishes. This causes so very divergent situations in the law as practiced state to state as well as creating Havoc at the central government level.
Gun control has been addressed in a number of ways. One view is that weapons that are designed for war should not be in the hands of John Q Public. Others have the view that if you could afford it you could own a tank.
The attitudes are just as varied on abortion. One view is that it is a matter of women’s health and that she should have the last word in it. Others believe it is murder and that the person or persons involved should face the death penalty. This would extend to the taxi driver that took the woman to the airport, as well as the pilot that flew her out of state. To believe that level of effort should be taken to protect something that does not even have a heart beat is pretty extreme, not to mention stupid.
At the moment we are headed to an election that hopefully put this nation back on track to use logic and reason to solve problems. There is hope and good in the world. We just need to vote and make sure that the worst President we have ever had does not make it back into the White House.
We have put up with 9 long years of listening to the whining and bitching of a man that has never done anything in his life that could truly be called noble or worthwhile. He has been protected all of his life by money he did not earn and the foolish hope of many people that he will take and interest in them and help them out. He won’t, that is not in his nature nor in his plan. Everything is supposed to be about him and there is no place for others.

Dinosaurs were alive longer than they’ve been extinct.

SCIENCE & INDUSTRY

Dinosaurs have been extinct for 65 million years. That’s a long time, but not nearly as long as they were alive for: 165 million years. Their reign as the planet’s dominant species absolutely dwarfs our own, which began a few hundred thousand years ago, and accounts for just 0.007% of the Earth’s history — a blink of the cosmic eye. If you compressed the planet’s history into one calendar year, dinosaurs would have appeared on January 1 before going extinct in the third week of September; humans, meanwhile, wouldn’t have shown up until December 31.

Dinosaurs lived in the Mesozoic Era, which began 252 million years ago and was divided into three periods: Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous. Many of the most well-known species had already gone extinct by the time others appeared; for instance, more time separated Stegosaurus and Tyrannosaurus (80 million years) than separated the T. rex and humans. It wasn’t until 1677 that the first fossil was discovered, not that the man who came upon it had any way of knowing what it was — he thought the bone in question belonged to a giant.

Lyle Northey (Silent/Boomer)

We are in danger of having Social Security go bankrupt and we have a huge national debt but no one is looking at any options that would help reduce this shortfall that would affect members of Congress.
By that I mean the practice of members of Congress getting full pay and benefits when they are no longer in Congress. They need not retire, they can lose and election and still walk away with the whole pie. This was one of the benefits they voted themselves when they took away the publics right to oversee such things.
It is time to rewrite the contracts they are given when they are elected. Other government employees are limited to 2% per year of service when retiring, not just leaving because they were in fact fired for poor performance. How many have been elected to one term and then gone on to being consultants or beltway bandits? Have the people that make the payroll open the books and let the public know the abuses that are being carried out by the one hit wonders.
If those of us that have had our wages taxed to build a fund to help us when we are no longer working and that fund is open for pork barrel projects we need to put the cork back in the barrel. The wages paid to members of Congress are not the basis of most of them becoming millionaires, special perks and out and out corruption are. Time to shut down the gravy train.
The golden umbrella or whatever should not be part of the departure of elected persons that did not do the job they were elected to do. We have witnessed years of Republican showboating and foot dragging to make their leader happy. It is time to get rid of everyone of the supporters of the the insurrection and just fire them, no special deals on the way out the door.
The way that big business is organized is very much the same way. The person that is put in charge makes a deal so that no matter how well or poorly they do they walk away with a nice severance deal. We need to take that equation out of government offices. The guy on the floor doing the work gets no bonus if he is let go so let’s go back to common sense in government elected offices as well.

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.